The U.S. Postal Service Can Bite My Freckled White Butt!!
By ParaTed2k
@ParaTed2k (22940)
Sheboygan, Wisconsin
June 1, 2007 11:41am CST
I recently moved from the upper to the lower in a house. I talked to my mail carrier (who is great, btw) and asked if she would put our mail in the other mailbox. Of course, she told me that she couldn't, and said I would have to put in a change of address card.
So I go to my local post office and put in the card.
We went a few days without getting mail, so I wondered if I somehow put the wrong new address on it. I went to the post office to see what happened...
What happened is proof of why the USPS needs to be privatized!
I waited in line... finally got up to the counter. The lady at the counter told me that she would get the supervisor and pointed to a door, where the supervisor would help me.
I waited at the door for a half hour. Finally, after someone who works at the post office, but was off duty at the time, offered to go back and get the supervisor.
When I finally got to talk to the supervisor, she told me that I probably didn't do anything wrong. All mail is processed through Milwaukee (60 miles away), not here. So, basically what is going on. My mail is coming to my city from the processing center in Milwaukee. When they see that my address is changed, they send it back to Milwaukee to get the cute little yellow sticker with my new address. Then sent back to my local post office.
She then told me that it might be a week or so before I start getting mail again.
The USPS boasts that they are 97% efficient in getting your mail to you. They also boast that they process 8,000 pieces of mail a second.
That means that every second they lose an average of 240 pieces of mail!
PRIVATIZE IT!
5 people like this
7 responses
@redyellowblackdog (10629)
• United States
1 Jun 07
I am unusually qualified to respond to your thread. For almost 5 years I was a highway contract mail carrier for the USPS. What's that? It is a privatized mail carrier.
Quite a bit of the US Mail is already delievered by private carriers who are not employees of the USPS. Almost all the bulk mail that moves from post office to post office moves by private carriers contracted to but not employees of the USPS. Many mail carriers are contract private self employed people. This is what I did.
Of course, the barrier to even more mail being delievered this way (BTW: 1/2 the cost) is the letter carriers union. They have a lot influence in the congress and even though the USPS is supposedly a private organization, it really isn't and congress can still have a lot of influence when it wants to.
So, it already is the case that the USPS is slowly being privatized from within. It is going to take a very long time, but it is happening.
3 people like this
@emeraldisle (13139)
• United States
2 Jun 07
Scary isn't it? The amount that they lose and such. Our mail has gone down hill big time lately. They have a local branch but none of our mail comes through there. It comes in and out through a town south of us in another county. So if we need to pick up a certified letter we can't go to the one just down the road but have to go to the other one. It's silly. We've told them repeatedly not to give us mail for the one person, they don't live here, and we still get it. Our old mail person put a note on our box even, on the inside, but the new one doesn't care and still gives it. Drives me nuts.
@baldingeagle69 (749)
• United States
2 Jun 07
I can't agree with you more. I recently moved, only a block and a half away, and it took 10 days to actually start getting any of my normal mail. I still am not getting all of my mail and it has been a month. I went from a great mailman to a not so great mail person. We used to get at least 10 pieces of mail a day now, sometimes, we don't get anything. It is a really messed up system. I could understand if I had moved across the country, but not just up the street.
It all plays into my theory that we need a major overhaul of most government functions. This is 2007 not 1954.
2 people like this
@estherlou (5015)
• United States
4 Jun 07
You and my husband should talk. You could start the anti-post office fan club! He is constantly mad at them. Standing in line for many minutes and just as you get to the front, the person goes on break! He just about goes ballistic! He's probably made more written complaints than anyone else ever. He's always finding proof of their incompetence.
1 person likes this
@Destiny007 (5805)
• United States
2 Jun 07
Ah yes, the joys of dealing with the USPS.
Try crossing a busy highway to get your mail because it would disrupt the poor underpaid route driver to have to actually put your mail on the same side of the road that you lived on.
Or find a note in your box saying that the mailbox was not at the correct height to allow easy access from the route drivers new wheels, and if you wanted your mail delivered you have to raise or lower it.
Then there's the ever increasing postage because they can no longer be competitive with email...or try the two pieces of ID necessary to rent a postal box, and you can't use your SSN.
They either need to privatize it or just do away with it entirely.
2 people like this
@shaggin (71664)
• United States
3 Aug 12
About every six months we get mail that is not ours and it is the same persons mail we get each time and they live the next town away. It is weird. The mail carrier we have now is so lazy. If she only has one piece of mail for the neighbor she puts all the mail in one persons box. Apparently she thinks we will deliver it to our neighbors so wont have to drive to different mailboxes. Yesterday the mail my sister got was a big envelope that wouldnt fit in their mailbox so the mail carrier just put the envelope in the grass. This had $70 worth of photo items in the envelope. My sister just had a baby a week ago and has been to sore to go outside. No one got the mail for her yesterday and so no one noticed the package laying getting damp in the grass. I found it there today and she opened the envelope and her pictures were damp and rippled. She was furious as she should be and called the post office to report it. I cannot believe a mail carrier would put a package on the grass instead of walking it to the persons door.
@brothertuck (1257)
• United States
1 Jun 07
Sounds like typical government beurocracy. I have dealt with the government in various ways, and they always seem to take two or three times longer to get anything done.
