Posted on 09/22/2014 4:42:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Bang! Lee looked up from addressing a package while she waited in line for service at the post office. Despite a lobby packed with customers—without notice—a postal worker slammed down the service window gate and went to lunch, leaving Lee and the other patrons to fend for themselves.
The U.S. Postal Service excels at treating customers poorly. My friend Lee’s story is but one of many nightmares of churlish postal workers and deficient USPS customer service. Many government workers get away with behavior that would get them fired if they worked at a private company like McDonald’s or Apple.
There should be a “Yelp” for government services. We deserve an open place where we can rate the “customer service” that we receive from the post office, as well as the EPA (which has distorted scientific data), the Federal Reserve (which inflates our currency), and the IRS (which hires employees like Lois Lerner who are admittedly “bad at math”).
Salaried workers in the private sector often skip their lunch break and shovel down a sandwich while preparing for an afternoon conference call with a big client. But government workers will take their lunch break whether they have a long line of businesspeople, senior citizens and parents with young children waiting in line—or not. Certainly not every postal worker is slothful, yet massive reform is necessary.
Elderly residents in the Brooklyn, NY neighborhood of Borough Park recently had to fight to regain mail delivery service after a mailman complained about having to stoop down to drop letters into mail slots. Based on a single whining mailman, the post office told Borough Park residents they would have to install higher mail slots or pick their mail up at the post office. The Brooklyn Eagle reported: “senior citizens [had to] stand in long lines to get their medications and other vital deliveries that used to come directly to their homes.”
You just can’t make these stories up. I was at the post office around 5:45 p.m. on a recent weeknight. The post office officially closed at 6:00 p.m., but many people were in line. (Some Americans actually work during the workday.) My jaw nearly dropped to the floor when one of the postal workers loudly complained for all to hear: “Everyone always waits to come in at 6:00 p.m.”
He wasn’t finished barking. He shouted at me, as I hurriedly taped up a package: “Are you going to be finished soon? We close at 6:00 p.m.” I felt like saying: “You can see I’m rushing and you don’t close for another fifteen minutes. If this were the private sector, you’d be happy to serve a paying customer instead of pushing them away. You’d also have business hours that were more conducive to your customers.”
Last week, I opened my P.O. box to find a clear plastic bag containing a ripped piece of my outgoing mail, along with a note from the post office: “WE CARE. Dear Postal Customer: We sincerely regret the damage to your mail during handling by the Postal Service.” There was also a sticker: “SENDER. Affix correct postage and remail.”
The ripped envelope contained a check that I had sent out to pay a bill. Apparently, the postal machine had removed my postage and shredded the envelope and check. The next day, I brought a new check and envelope to the post office and asked them to reimburse me for the postage and make sure that the envelope arrived by the check’s due date.
After checking with her supervisor, the clerk told me: “No. We can’t do anything other than what we’ve already done.” I said, “You mean other than ruining my mail?” She said: “Well, we put it in a plastic bag for you.” At this point, I realized that logic and reason were pointless and simply re-mailed the envelope and left.
Last strange but true story: my mother bought a roll of stamps. When she returned home, she noticed that the roll of stamps was unusable because the stamps were affixed together. She immediately returned the roll to the post office, explained the situation and asked for a replacement. The postal worker told her: “Are you kidding? We can’t give you your money back or exchange it. Would you go to a grocery store and buy a loaf of squashed bread and then try to return it? How do I know you didn’t glue those stamps together yourself and then come back here?”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to point out that the aforementioned excuse is full of holes. Why would someone intentionally damage stamps and then ask for a fresh set? They would have nothing to gain, except an inconvenience. Also, who buys a loaf of bread that is obviously squashed? The roll of stamps looked perfectly fine and there was no way to tell that they were glued together until my mother tried using them.
Postal workers, kindly reform yourselves. Your salaries come from the taxpayers’ hard-earned money and we are losing patience. The customer should always be first.
It doesn’t necessarily make sense to charge more to those who cost more. The insurance industry is built on costs being lowered over huge numbers of policy holders.
Amazon.com also finds averaging delivery costs across the nation to be more beneficial to their business.
What kinda stamps are you using that you have to soak them over night and then use glue on them?
That is the same mentality and skill level of people who will be administering our health care.”
and who work for TSA and who administer the Veteran’s programs and every other program in which government employees are involved.
Most the mail I get is nothing but junk mail. I wished I had a mailbox with a shredder extra for that. You can stop unwanted phone calls by signing up for the No call list or not answering calls from numbers you don’t recognize. Why not the same for junk mail?
Someone I know well once claimed with pride ‘you can mail a letter anywhere in the country for the same price’ without realizing what an insane, financially and logistically unworkable proposition it was for the USPS. But it is a perfect illustration of the practical disaster that is collectivist ‘fairness.’
He couldn’t look at UPS or FedEx with their price-by-distance (and weight) scheme and understand why they were profitable.
I’m still hot about their decision to remove stamp-vending machines because - wait for it - they occasionally required maintenance as all machines do. Boo hoo.
The alternative (or motive, perhaps) was to stick a poor stamp-buying customer back in the same queue that moved slowly due to parcel mailers, registered mail senders, etc. Their ‘helpful’ advice to avoid the queue was to buy stamps at the supermarket instead (?!?).
It’s also a joy to have a grumpy counter agent accuse you of enclosing C4 explosive or nitroglycerine in your parcel by way of their questions.
Why does everyone assume that I am a he? Never have been, never will be.
the best is each post office has at least one dude that weighs around 450lbs and can’t move....of course he’ll be receiving gov’t benefits for the rest of his life hence we’re the fools...
Hagan Tillis: I’ll post to you on another thread.
USPS: maybe it was a constitutional function at one time, but no longer should it be. If the country were founded today, the founders would NEVER have made this a government function. Also, the union protection was never part of the founding idea of a USPS.
USPS is way beyond its sell by date.
Yup!
What could go wrong?
“Unfortunately the places where it still is a pleasant experience are the ones taking the hit while the big post offices with multiple useless and surly employees will continue as usual.”
Same thing is going on in my rural area. Rather than shut down any of the small community PO’s, all of them will be cutting hours. A perfect example of their ‘efficiency’ is that if I want to send a letter from my PO to somebody on the other side of the river at their PO, the letter must first travel the 3 hours to El Paso and 3 hours back, which usually takes a couple of days. I can WALK between the 2 PO’s in less than an hour. The cut hours of business means either taking time off from work or driving 35 minutes to town for the privilege of dealing with the “multiple useless and surly employees”.
Unless I am invite by a member of senior management to lunch that event usually passes me by unnoticed.
Everyone who works at our little post office is strongly conservative. We all know each other in this small community, and such a thing would never happen there.
Our suburban PO has mostly very friendly workers, and one surly one you get the “that’s right, and you can’t do anything about it..” vibe from. So one can pretty much give the whole place a bad name.
...and never had an issue or problem shipping packages or the occasionally rare letter.
There is something worse than a USPS money order:
A “Seven-Eleven” money order!
There is hardly any retailer going to cash those things.
Take them to your bank..simple!
I agree that the Founders did not envision unions.
Since I believe that the USPS works in rural areas better than other carriers, then I’m not prepared to give them a ‘sell by’ date.
That is exactly the reason the USPS is bankrupt.
so for rural areas, we should support the whole big stinky mess?
I rarely disagree with you. I vehemently disagree here. If the USPS were done away with, Fed Ex and to some extent, UPS would fill the gap in 90 days or less. And gosh knows whatever the next innovator like Fed Ex is.
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