My dad worked as a postal clerk for a while before he retired and he was always railing about how many "supervisors" they had on every shift. About 1 to 3 ratio it seemed he said. Absolutely ridiculous.
My dad went from part time flexie to the manager of one of the bulk mail centers. Over 40 years he really got soured on the whole thing.
He would say that moving the mail was pretty simple, and while he had his run ins with the unions there WAS a pride in workmanship.
I worked there for the four summers I was in college. To be honest, in the past 30 years, I have yet to work with a better bunch of “professionals.” They were really dedicated to getting the mail to the right place. And this was not a small post office (about 200 delivery routes.) I wish that staffs over the year would be 80% as good as those guys.
But, as I left I could see the “college” kids and “efficiency” experts coming in to start the automation. That was the beginning of the end. Too many supervisors. Too much bean counting and not enough focus on getting stuff done. Its funny, the bean counters are pretty much the reason why its become inefficient.
The stuff I saw happening in the post office, I saw repeatedly over the next thirty years in company after company. Whenever someone tried to “reengineer” the system without input from the folks on the front end, they really screwed to pooch.
So, yeah, they could dump 50% of the middle management and the system would run a lot better.