Is Taylor Swift "mean" to her millions of adoring fans? The 23-year-old Grammy winner receives countless pieces of fan mail each week from around the world -- but over the weekend, a huge stockpile of said mail was discovered, unopened, laying in a dumpster in Swift's hometown of Nashville, Tenn. Local Kaylee Francescan discovered the motherlode of ignored letters "covered with pictures, hearts and sparkles" while throwing out the trash.

Taylor Swift attends "40 Principales Awards" 2012 photocall on January 24, 2013 in Madrid, Spain.
Credit: Juan Naharro Gimenez/WireImage.com

"There were like hundreds of letters in there to Taylor Swift and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh!' I didn't know if they were stolen [or] discarded, so I threw them in a box," Francescan told ABC Nashville station WKRN. "And I'm like, 'Somebody needs to let Taylor know,' It did bother me [because] I know how much her fans mean to her."

The fan mail is typically sent to a P.O. Box at a Nashville strip mall, with a member of the chart-topper's team fetching the mail regularly. Thankfully, it was simply a clerical error, Swift's rep tells Us Weekly.

"A small batch of mail that was supposed to be delivered to Taylor was accidentally put with letters headed for the recycling center," the rep explains.

Indeed, Swift's gratitude towards her fans is well known. "It blows me away how thoughtful and organized they are," Swift has said. "Sometimes they'll give me a scrapbook or a project that was made by hundreds of fans from around the world."