Unionizing the employees probably doesn’t help much either. I recently had to actually mail a letter, and so went to the local post office to do so (I didn’t have any stamps). First, the automated machine for buying stamps and package labels couldn’t sell me just the one stamp I needed, so I had to add to the tie-up by going through the line to mail it at the counter. So much for saving time. The line had about 20-25 people when I got in it, and 35 minutes later, there were still over 15 people ahead of me. There were two, and sometimes three, clerks at the counter, but it was taking them ridiculous amounts of time to process customers, as they seemed to be deliberately moving without any sense of urgency. I reflected that, had this been FedEx, I would have been able to mail my letter within 15 minutes of arriving, and the clerk would have been polite and efficient, because that’s what he would have been paid to do. If the USPS fails, it’s because they’ve ossified to the point where the customer and the mail they are transmitting are not the main reason that the employees are getting paid.
[snicker]
The package machines at the POs here will sell you 1 stamp of any value you want, prints it right up. Ugly little barcode things, but 1 stamp.
A lot of the delays at the post office is people that don’t know what they’re doing. I see a lot of people walk in with unsealed unaddressed boxes of stuff and the postal worker actually helps them get it all together. If people actually came in prepared they could cycle a 25 person line in 15 minutes.
You are wrong. I was recently informed by Freeper "muawiyah" that long waits at USPS counters are the fault of the customers. /s