You Cannot Give Your Texas Mail Carrier These Gifts During the Holidays or Any Time of Year

Send and receiving mail has certainly changed over the last 30 years or so. Mailing letters and sending checks to pay our bills through the mail was the norm at one time. Today, we can just go into an app or go onto a website and pay our bills. Communicating with friends, especially those that live far away from us, is much easier to do thanks to text messaging and social media. Even with all those changes, mail service is still very important for certain things. Many of us still have regular mail carriers that we want to say "Thank you" to from time to time. While you can do that with a gift, there are certain restrictions to what gifts you can give them.

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Postal Workers are Government Employees

Something you may not fully know about postal workers is that they fall under the executive branch of the government. The United States Postal Service (USPS) we know today was created by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. This established the postal service as an independent establishment of the executive branch. This also means that postal employees have some of the same restrictions as members of the executive branch, including restrictions on accepting bribes.

Can't Give Your Postal Worker These Gifts

You may or may not see your regular postal worker during their daily route but you do know they do a good job getting your mail and packages to you. You will feel inclined to give them a "Thank you" in the form of a gift. Depending on what that gift is, your postal carrier may have to decline what you have given them. Yes, it can be considered a bribe to give your postal worker a gift.

Employee Tipping and Gift-Receiving Policy

At usps.com, there is a section titled Employee Tipping and Gift-Receiving Policy. In that section, you can see the gift restrictions mail carriers must follow and is the guidelines you need to follow when giving your mail carrier a gift:

All postal employees, including carriers, must comply with the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Exec­utive Branch. Under these federal regulations, carriers are permitted to accept a gift worth $20 or less from a customer per occasion, such as Christmas. However, cash and cash equivalents, such as checks or gift cards that can be exchanged for cash, must never be accepted in any amount. Furthermore, no employee may accept more than $50 worth of gifts from any one customer in any one calendar year period.

So yes, you can give them a gift but it can't have a value of more than $20, it cannot be in the form of cash or a gift card and the gifts during a calendar year cannot be worth more than $50.

Say "Thank you" to your mail carrier just follow the above guidelines in doing so.