USPS
Been hearing a lot of these commercials on the radio about supposedly closing post office locations. Seems that congress is looking to close some branches. Not surprising. The free market does it better, faster, and guarantees results. The USPS, not so much. And then there’s email, faxes, etc. and those are cheaper and faster than mail. The ads depict doom and gloom about your mail being slow and blah blah. But at the end of the ads, they say something like this ad brought to you by your postal employees. Is the USPS buying ads to save its own skin or is there a union that does that?
September 24th, 2009 at 9:41 am
There’s most definitely a union, as my in-laws are in it. *sigh* apwu I dunno who bought the ad-time though.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Be careful! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKlzQo3Wqo
September 24th, 2009 at 10:15 am
As a former postal worker (and Marine! Man, when I snap, it’ll be EPIC!), I can tell you that the USPS is the most wasteful, bureaucratic system you have ever seen.
I never was union, and let me tell you that wasn’t looked well upon. One person would habitually come in late and when they were reprimanded they’d go an bitch about it and then people would stop working until they got an apology. I was *SPECIFICALLY* told that they could not promote me because I wasn’t black or a woman. When they developed software that would read handwritten addresses with 90% accuracy and thus take away the need to have centers like where I worked with hundreds of trained monkeys to do it, the Union sued to prevent it from ever being put into place.
After working there for a few years, it amazed me that your mail ever got anywhere.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I realize that it is hard to believe, but there are people who do live without computers and internet access, and who may live or have relatives who live in remote areas that, in a purely Free Market system, would be deemed “unprofitable” and therefore cut out from being serviced. Having a national postal service guarantees *universal* service, which sometimes entails operating at a loss in some areas to provide service that is affordable to all (or not otherwise available at all). I still pay my bills by check and dropping my bills in the mailbox. I’d be pretty pissed if my only “offline” option was to overnight them on FedEx or UPS.
September 24th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Our mail carrier is great–he’s been doing the same route for more than 15 years (amazing in this area) and is just a nice guy. Our local post office is quite good, but then again we live in a nicer town in Northern Virginia (basically a suburb of DC), and in the 20+ years I’ve lived here service has only gotten better.
Hubby and I did have one bad incident with a postal worker in our neighborhood, but that was a case of road rage and said worker wasn’t on duty.
Guess it all depends on where you live.
September 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
So JJR, explain to everybody why other people should be forced to pay for the costs associated with your choice of where to live.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
@ JJR
lol
September 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
It’ll be OK. We can retrain them to provide the same sterling level of customer service in the new, nationalized health care industry.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
JJR: If it’s really necessary to have universal service, fine. Have a USPS that only serves remote areas (or areas nobody else will serve), and fund it with pure tax money for all its losses, as a direct arm of the State, with no monopoly.
There’s no need to have it a pseudo-private entity with a monopoly on home mail (but not parcel) service. It’s already kept afloat only by a substantial influx of Federal money, so why not just admit it’s a Federal service rather than a real competitor?
Let’s remove the monopoly power and the subsidies and see how well the other players can do.
September 24th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Woop, woop woop hold on there Sigivald. You were doing fine right up until the “substantial influx of Federal money” part. The Post Office Department was a federal service that ended in 1971. USPS yields some billions into federal coffers each year. When they run short, they have to borrow like any other corporation. Yes they have a monopoly (on a fairly narrow and declining segment) but they don’t get “grant money.”
Rural people don’t want their local post office closed because of the common-law-depth morass that is government policy on place names. It is a long story, but harks back to the ALL CAPS computerized Sixties, when POD still had legal name-indexing authority, and got told to simplify and rationalize place names. They tried to take the H off Pittsburgh, and hilarity ensued. As things stand now, if you live in a tiny old town and USPS attaches you to another city’s rural route, your city ceases to exist to the rest of the world. This need not be so, but political authorities are not in a hurry to touch this after what happened with that H. Also, lobbyists for the real estate industry are on record as believing there’s no reason not to have two cities with the same name in the same state. What could go wrong?
You’d be surprised how much arcane information that USPS takes care of is used as really important base information in other companies’ data. Doesn’t have to be that way, but you’d better do a little planning before you just pull the plug and lock the doors. Try to remember that I warned you, because it’s going to happen, it’s going to be far-reaching, and I’m going to remind you.
Robb, did the title “Transitional Employee” give you any clues about your promotability? You didn’t have a permanent job, and you never saw a piece of mail except on TV. Don’t overplay your hand. You’re trying to impersonate a postal clerk, of all things.
September 25th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
The USPS does get subsidies in the form of not-paying for many facets of running a business – they aren’t paying rent or property taxes, for example.
However, the USPS does provide a valuable service that is worth having the FedGov oversee, in my opinion. It is one of the few areas of ‘public good’ that only a large government can provide. Paying directly for services, plus indirectly through re-directed taxes is a fair burden for the benefit, I think.
I think the Libertarian ideas go a bit to far sometimes – we still have a society to run here, folks.
On the flip side, the union there is horrible and the cost controls are horrible. Those are the areas that need to be addressed, IMO.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Where I live the PO has been removing the postal vending machines from all the post offices and even the little standalone postal kiosks they have here and there.
You’d think that if they were shutting down branches, they’d at least leave the stamp vending machines up in the offices so you could get your mail needs taken care of after hours.
My guess is that it’s a union thing. With no vending machines of self service kiosk you have to go to the counter to have a union member service your postal needs.