Posted on 08/22/2009 6:46:39 AM PDT by kellynla
Whatever possessed President Obama to mention the travails of the post office while discussing health care the other day, his timing was certainly apt. The Postal Service is headed toward a loss of $7 billion this year and another $7 billion in 2010. Naturally, Congress is planning another bailout rather than the kind of reform that would recognize how technology has transformed modern communications.
Most mail today is delivered electronically via email. Traditional postal mail volume has fallen by nearly 20% since 2000, and the average household gets one-third fewer letters than a decade ago. But this is only the first stage of the decline. The transition to Internet communications means that the Postal Service's core business—from paying bills, to sending birthday greetings, to delivering magazines—is slowly vanishing. This is on top of the package business that has already been transformed by Federal Express and UPS.
Not that the Postal Service has ever been a paragon of efficiency. If the cost of a postage stamp had risen at merely the rate of inflation since 1950 when a stamp cost two cents, today you could send a first-class letter for 30 cents. Instead the cost rose in May to 44 cents from 42 cents.
These higher prices have corresponded with worsening service. The mailman used to deliver twice a day in urban areas, but now Postal Service Chief Executive John Potter says he wants to stop Saturday service to reduce costs. No private business in America could continually raise prices, lose billions of dollars and then hope to win back customers by promising poorer service.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“Y’know, I’d be thrilled if our mail carrier could read and speak Englishfunny you should mention that...”
I had a postman deliver some mail from another BLOCK to my house...I caught up with him and this genius couldn’t even read the street sign!
Where do we sign up? :o)
For what it's worth, I neglected to add, in my previous post, that the 13 oz. weight limit applies only to domestic mail, but not to international.
“Where do we sign up?”...for?
Getting rid of the PO!
Postal ping. :)
Well frankly that’s how it should be. No part of the government should ever turn a profit. When government turns a profit it’s really over charging.
As for the monopoly that’s actually very simple: how many people do you want poking around in your mailbox? I want as few as possible in there. I especially don’t want UPS in there, UPS is one of the most annoying companies ever. FedEx is trying hard lately to be more annoying though, used to be FedEx was good to deal with, late they stick packages in puddles, run over parking bumpers (our FedEx guy has killed 2 and damaged a 3rd in recent weeks) and put these huge annoying stickers on your door to inform you that there’s a package in front of your door two feet below the sticker.
Do you really think any of the “competitors” could handle the volume USPS deals with? If they got just 10% of that 3.8 billion parcels a week they’d implode. People really need to comprehend what the USPS does. They deliver more stuff to more places in a year than their competition does in the entire history of their companies. And they do it pretty quick, pretty cheap, and with a surprisingly low error rate. Yeah everybody’s got their horror story, just this week I got mail that was eaten by the sorter, of course I got 2 dozen other parcels delivered safe and sound, and that was my first damaged parcel of the year.
You'd be shocked and surprised how easy that is to do, even as an experienced mail carrier. You, too, would do it. I guarantee it. I know of no one that can maintain full mental awareness of every second of their day. One slip-up and you've put mail in the wrong box, and someone is complaining on the internet.
My Vietnamese was better than his English...if you get my drift. LOL
I understand that, but even local people living in their own hometown, knowing everyone, probably went to school with them, now carrying their mail, still screw up. Our most senior mail carrier described it as shelling peas. You go along, go along... pretty soon you realize you’ve thrown pods in the bowl and peas in the trash.
Sometimes, it’s fat fingers grabbing a couple too many letters and throwing them into the mailbox prior to where they go. Sometimes it’s a casing mistake. I have spots on my case where 1814 Gantz street is right next to 1814 Quail drive. If you don’t catch the name as you are casing as fast as possible.... Sometimes it’s a dyslexic moment. 31676 is right next to 31767, with the same last name. Dan and Dean, father and son, next door neighbors, with each other’s numbers on each other’s mail.
My point is it’s easy to screw up, and takes a large amount of focus to get it right, and we do a remarkable job given the volume we handle. After five years, I still kind of mentally high-five myself for a day’s route with NO errors. It’s tougher too, as I’m responsible for knowing four routes.
In the last three years I have had TEN different postal carriers. They can’t make up their mind how they want to run the place.
Nothing is ever free. Someone pays for them.
It's confusing, I know. This week, our Route 2 customers saw three different carriers in three days, only one which is actually assigned to that route. It happens.
Sure, the shipper pays for it out of the money the Post Office takes in when you ship your goods in the boxes.
And you can’t turn the boxes inside out and use for UPS or FedEx shipments, as they are marked all over inside and outside with “USPS Priority Mail”.
Smaller towns were served by buses or trucks to the nearest rail station. If you lived in one of these isolated areas of the country, it might take 3-4 days for the mail on the other side of the country to reach you. Now, that seems par for mail from the neighboring state!
I remember twice daily delivery but I cannot remember exactly when it ended. Forty to fifty years ago’ There also was a delivery box at the end of our street. Back then, many housewives did not drive and this was a necessity for the neighborhood.
There will always be a post office in some form. They employ too many people who are a powerful voting bloc. I wonder how many of their voters are upset about what the Dem Congress might do to their health plan, the Federal Employees Health Plan, in their healthcare reform social engineering.
The selecting officers for postal hires have a choice of the top three candidates for a position. Disabled vets go to the top of the list. Five point veterans with wartime era service, like Desert Storm, are mixed thruout the list with other candidates according to test score order. The selection must be made among the top three candidates on the list. That said, the selecting officer feels obligated to select a racially balanced and gender balanced workforce. Justification must be provided if this goal is not achieved, bonuses may not be awarded by higher ups.
Your concerns in that regard would seem more in tune with such as agencies as National Forest Service, National Park Service, etc.
USPS, for the last 30+ years, has rarely hired "outside" for higher level positions.
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