Posted on 07/26/2011 4:55:30 AM PDT by Libloather
Post office looking to close offices to save money
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID - Associated Press
AP – 7 hrs ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Postal Service is launching a study of thousands of local post offices for possible closure in an effort to save money.
The cash-strapped agency, which lost $8 billion last year, scheduled a briefing for Tuesday at which it is expected to announce the action.
Most of the approximately 3,600 offices that face reviews are in rural areas, but postal official say they are looking into alternate service, such as locating offices in local businesses, town halls or community centers.
In those cases the so-called Village Post Office would replace one to be closed.
And coming under review doesn't necessarily mean an office will close. The post office announced in January it was reviewing 1,400 offices for closing. So far 280 have been closed and 200 have finished the review process and will remain open.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
not the socialist usps.
In government operations, capital is spent on wages to buy popularity and votes instead of being reinvested in the business to improve productivity and profitability. You no longer find stamp machines in most post offices. They were never maintained and had to be scrapped.
Yeah, but their criteria suck. Back at my home town down in Louisiana, there are three "post offices" being examined. Two essentially consist of a building and an RFD route. The other is actually "in" a small village and has signficant "walk-in" traffic. So which one are they going to close.....the one with the "walk-in" traffic, because it's "smaller" than the other two. It would make more sense to close the other two, and run the two RFD routes from the remaining location.
My post office is owned by someone in California. I’m in Missouri. We NEED some concrete repair, but we GOT an ADA compliant bathroom. We had to shut down the bathroom for about six weeks, put up with all the noise and dust from the part-time contractors, and we finally are ADA compliant, down to the wheelchair accessible water fountain.
Yay.
There are no handicapped employees in our office, no public access to the bathrooms, and we’re required to be physically capable enough to lift 75 lbs out of the bottom of our parcel hampers. What the hell do we need an ADA compliant bathroom for?
You will hunt in vain for the guy who did that.
We had ADA compliant cra**ers installed at USPS headquarters and when they got done they discovered they were not Orthodox Jewish, Hindu or Islamic compliant ~ for the ladies. Problem was the doors on the stalls SWUNG INWARDS ~ they'd gotten the extra space for the handicapped toilet out of the space needed for the nonhandicapped ladies toilet space.
BTW, at USPS headquarters there are a fair share of Jewish, Hindu and Moslem women ~ kind of a compendium of everybody from everywhere in America!
Oh, the stamp machines hanging on the wall? Those machines were always cr*p. The multicommodity venders work much better.
Give the mail to the paper boy (person) to deliver. They seem to hit same places.
USPS doesn't really need to do that. Although the landlords don't like it USPS can simply cancel the lease or "take" the building and sell it off.
I have no idea what idiot would come up with a "length of lease" criteria over there ~ some lawyer no doubt, or one of the CPAs I had to fight to eliminate the "respond within 15 days" trick that sent all our targets for collection out to get better lawyers.
You know, sometimes people will pay you if you're polite ~ and 30 days gives them a chance to get a business loan. Most postage deficiencies were not planned and most publications are very small business who just don't have a year's worth of postage on hand.
Anyway, someone rather remote from the realities of the business place has said "Check the Lease".
The problem is obvious ~ you are closing post offices, not arranging for keeping them open! Screw the lease. Make the decision on service considerations first, last and only. Within a year or so they may be able to dump all the leases!
My point is that money is wasted on a restroom that no handicappd person is going to see. We don’t need two water fountains side by side. It’s just waste. Even though it’s not tax payer dollars, it’s still stupid to waste the money.
As you know the USPS is operated in a very rigid and uniform manner. It's a gigantic machine. The people are cogs. My job was to write the rules for those cogs and fix wear and tear.
Hard job but somebody had to do it.
BTW, even though I'm not particularly handicapped I've noticed that my preference is for the HIGHER handicapped toilets as I get older. BTW, I can still lift 70 pounds, and moreover, walk around outside in 10 degree weather wearing nothing but my underwear for that matter ~ and do that for hours.
Still, no problem with the handicapped toilet and I'm glad to hear that if I'd ever visited your post office there'd be a place for me to go.
Noteworthy ~ after a relative ended up with a cholestomy bag I discovered the primary design parameter for the handicapped toilet. It's not for the sit down jobs, it's for the change the bag jobs. The larger oval gives you a landing zone that keeps down the splash, and let me assure you nobody wants that splash around. You could very well have an otherwise apparently healthy and sound employee end up with a j-pouch or cholestomy bag and you'd all be happy to have that particular toilet.
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