Brent and Paula Griffith showed up at the tiny post office in Graysville, Tennessee, first thing Monday morning to pick up the mail for the route Paula has run as a contract driver for 14 years.
The mail wasn't there - one of many twists and turns going on across the U.S. as one of the nation's oldest institutions finds itself buffeted by the winds of politics.
In the Griffiths' case, the local postmaster told the couple to go to the post office in Sale Creek, Tennessee, about 5 miles away, to get the deliveries for the 862 boxes across more than 100 miles on Paula's route.
"None of this has been changed in her contract, and there is no communication as to why the mail is sitting at Sale Creek," Brent Griffith said. "If any changes are made to the contract, it has to come through the contracting agency first."
By Monday afternoon, Paula Griffith had retrieved the mail from Sale Creek and started deliveries, but she was running a couple of hours behind her normal schedule, which put her outside the terms of her contract, Brent Griffith said.
"She's going to try to run the route as quickly as she can," he said. "It's been a mess. Nobody knows what's going on."
The unexpected changes to routes in northern Hamilton and Rhea counties are the latest indication of confusion over the operation of the United States Postal Service. On Sunday, Democratic lawmakers demanded that leaders of the Postal Service testify at an emergency oversight hearing Aug. 24 on mail delays.
Voters and lawmakers in several states are complaining that some curbside mail collection boxes are being removed.
Susan Wright, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said by email statement that changes to postal operations are part of a plan to increase efficiency.
"In addition to developing a broader business plan, the Postal Service is taking immediate steps to increase operational efficiency by re-emphasizing existing plans that have been designed to provide prompt and reliable service within current service standards," she wrote.
Wright added that the situation in Graysville had been 'rectified' by Monday afternoon.
"Mail will come to Graysville," she said.
Critics are worried that disruptions of the postal service amount to intentional undermining of a system that will be critical to the November election - as President Donald Trump makes repeated statements blasting vote-by-mail in states other than Florida, where he and his wife Melania will cast mail ballots.
Meanwhile, at post offices across Chattanooga, signs were posted in late July indicating operating hours would change beginning on Saturday.
At the post office on Amnicola Highway, weekday hours were going to shift from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. to 10 a.m.-1 p.m. In Red Bank, the post office would have been open only Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and from 2-4 p.m. Similar signs went up in July in Ooltewah, on Highway 58, on North Market Street, in Highland Park, downtown and in Soddy-Daisy.
Then postal workers got orders to take down the signs.
"The original posting that went up, they told us to take them down and destroy them," a postal clerk said. "We're kind of in limbo right now."
In Graysville, the Griffiths said they hope their mail delivery routine returns to normal, but Brent will no longer be able to serve as a back-up driver for Paula when she needs help with the route, he said.
"We've just now got an email stating that I'm not allowed to deliver mail because it wasn't right for me to contact the news people," he said. "I'm no longer allowed to deliver the mail as her substitute driver."
Contact Mary Fortune at mfortune@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow her on Twitter at @maryfortune.