Post Office Woes - Part One

    Above the four counter windows in my neighborhood post office used to hang a sign reading: No One Waits More Than 15 Minutes.  But that sign is gone now, and most of the time so are two and many times three of the employees behind the windws.  It's not uncommon to stand in line for fifteen minutes while you wait to buy stamps or pick up a package.       

    The other day the man ahead of me wanted to mail a package.  "How much does it weigh?" asked the postal clerk.  "I don't know," said the customer.  "Well, here are two forms, one for four pounds and under and one for over four pounds.  Take the package over there, weigh it, fill out the correct form and bring it back to this window.  You won't have to stand in line again."    

     Knocking on the door at the parcel post pick up area produced nothing but the echoing sound of a fist on wood, for several other potential customers so they joined those of us in the stamp-buying and held-mail collecting line.  When our line had twenty or twenty-five people in it, the parcel post door opened, an employee emerged and announced, "Who is here to collect a package?"  Several hands raised as people waved the notices they had gotten in the mail.  "Come with me," she beckoned and they followed her to the door they had knocked on earlier.

     Neither of these examples, and I could give you many more, is an efficient way to conduct business.  What is happening to our postal service?

     I have heard that between the first and the fifteenth of January some of the mail is deliberately not delivered so the post office will be able to claim a high volume of delivery on the day when officials count how many pieces a handled in specific areas.

     Do we have to go to such lengths to convince the government that this is an essential service?  In addition to the inefficiency and inconvenience for those us in a city, worse things are happening in rural areas.  Some of those post offices provide more than delivery services for their patrons.  Information is passed around, swaps are made.  In one sparsely populated area I know of, the post office has become a community gathering place and exchange.  If a patron doesn't pick up his/her mal for a couple of days, someone will go out to their place and check that they are OK.  When that kind of post office closes, as many of them are, the community and neighborly feeling the residents have for each other is in danger of collapse.

     Let me be clear about something here.  None of what I say in today's column is aimed at postal employees.  I find it remarkable actually, that they are able to continue delivering services in a patient, civil and even mostly cheerful way in the face of what must be a demoralizing and increasingly heavy workload.  My hat is off to them and I wouldn't want any of their jobs. 

     The people who make the decisions behind the post office staffing and closures, however, seem to forget that the post office is not a business.  No, it is not a business and was never meant to be one.  It is a service.  Check it out:  USPS, United States Postal Service.  Not United States Postal Company.  Would we run the armed forces on a profit basis?  The Border Patrol?

     And one final word.  The other day I saw a plain, dark blue station wagon with the back open, parked at the curb in my neighborhood.  Boxes and bins of mail filled the space behind the back seat.  A man I had never seen on our route, wearing a postal shirt bent over the bins.  "Are you delivering our mail?" I asked.  "Yes," he told me.  "There weren't enough postal trucks available so we're using unmarked vehicles.  Talk about an opportunity for terrorism.  The post office is so paranoid about bombs being mailed that special rules for packages have ben devised and bullet proof glass installed, but it allows home delivery from unmarked vehicles.   I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I ask you, what is to stop some misdirected person from donning a facsimile uniform, filling his vehicle with junk mail, which there is plenty of, and driving around till he finds a likely place to plant a bomb?  It absolutely does not make any sense to me.

     There's lots more.  But enough.  At least for today.