I don't know about you, but to me the idea lately put forward by the US Postmaster General -- of cutting mail service from six to five days per week -- blows.
If anything, we should have mail service seven days a week. At the very least even in rural areas, the Post Office should remain open and available for in-person mail pickup.
The US Postal Service is a cool institution, but man could it use some basic upgrading. And I don't mean in the way of Do-it-yourself U-SCANS like in some grocery store. For bigger post office branches, how about a little streamlining in sorting out customers, slow boats in two lanes and express folks with fewer than seven no-nonsense items in the other two or three? How about some computers? How about a general upgrade in infrastructure?
My favorite post offices are the ones open real late, or all day and all night like the 30th Street P.O. in Philadelphia. You can walk to it 24/7. That's what I'm talking about. I don't need the Pony Express or Wells Fargo, man, and most of the time I don't need no UPS or FedEx, either. Just the US Postal Service and the internet will do fine. But if they have to cut a day, can we make it on Wednesday? Not Saturday!
Back in the days of Andrew Jackson, mail delivery came twice per day. Then the God squad got involved and cut Sundays, some ass backwards attack on Irish and Bavarian Catholics, I think. What we need now is more service, not less. And I'm willing to pay more for stamps if it keeps things going, certainly. In other words, I'd give that my stamp of approval. Or to quote from RoboCop, I'd buy that for a dollar.
Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.
10 comments:
The main Post Office on Fort Street near Third is 24/7.
I wonder though about the infrastructure. Watching an episode of How It's Made on postal service it seems that the technology has advanced about as far as it can without some heretofore unknown machinery. If I remember the figure correctly in a branch the size of Fort street, 1 sorting machine handles 4000 pieces of mail per minute every minute of every hour. Seems to me that it would be hard to get better than that.
On the other... Our mail delivery is spotty anyway I doubt I'd miss a day.
I heard about this and felt a little catch in my gut. As a writer who started out before the net, I have a particular interest when the mail arrives. Used to be every time you opened the mail you had a chance of getting an acceptance, or at least a kind word. I don't send out much by mail anymore but I still get a little excitement when the mail arrives.
I'm always getting mail that's meant for the next street over. Fedex and UPS are cheaper than Uncle in many categories. We could really cut down on global warming if we eliminated all those little white trucks.--The Tristero System
I love getting mail, and I'm with Charles, the days before the net were cool in that every day's mail held such hope and promise. I can remember marking my calendar when a submission went out and counting the days of the response time indicated in the submission guidelines. There's a story I think in the collection "Doom City" from the Greystone Bay series. In the story I'm thinking of, a guy stops getting mail and ceases to exist.
WM Mark, thanks for the shout out to the Fort Street p.o. I've indeed sent stuff from there (especially when on deadline for college counselling). Hard to get to by foot, however; but a good place to meet homeless people nearby. The delivery time is still good frommy experience; just seems like there's room for improvement in the over-the-counter process.
Charles and Sidney, right on. I'm a big fan of the internet, too, though. This is my psychological makeup: I'm an early embracer of the new, and an early embracer of the old once the new takes over.
Tristero System, Mr. Lot 49: I also like the idea of private mail and couriers. The old Thurn und Taxis TNT trucks used to roll by with great frequency. But we can use all of them, maybe have little gulf cart trucks for delivery people.
Cheers, all!
p.s. golf carts . . .
Maybe it's just me, but when I was growing up in NY, there was no Sat. delivery.
clever title for this post, thanks for making me laugh :)
I never liked getting the mail in Florida, as it contained most of the time free credit cards that my salary will not be able to handle, lots and lots of junk mail and wasted paper that can actualy be used to make books for the poor in Africa, and ofcourse the best mightmare....BILLS! haha
anyways yesterday I was at the airport in Jordan and the post office was closed, and an American lady was asking why is the office closed on a Saturday, if I knew about this post, I would have told her, hey it's a bit better here than America.
Lemme see, England has two deliveries per day....but it is only about twice the area of New York State. And the most probable day to be cut, if the USPS goes to five days a week, is Tuesday, because that's when the mail volume is lowest. Also, England's postal rate is 0.61 cents American....still want to pay that much? And don't forget, a lot of what was First Class letters now is email. All in all, it doesn't seem to me that the USPS is doing such a bad job.
Oh, and remember some years back when Italian Postal workers went on strike? Know what happened to all the mail piled up in their street mailboxes? They burned it all! Still think the USPS is doing such a bad job?
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