Let's abolish the USPS
Oh, I'm so serious about this one. My husband and I have discussed it over the last few days, and if we got to choose which useless bureaucracy to axe first, it would be the United States Postal Service. We've had our share of adventures with various inept government agencies in 2008, starting with the Transportation Security Agency at LAX on our way home from our honeymoon, going to the Texas Department of Safety, and now the USPS (surprisingly, the Social Security Administration was the easiest to deal with).
We bought a house recently, and moved in just last week. The day we signed the final papers and got our keys, I went to the USPS website and submitted a change of address for each of us. Of course, I know we'll still get some mail at our old apartment (I've done too many changes of address in the last four years), but I figure we could start forwarding stuff immediately.
Our new neighborhood has community mailboxes, a practice I disagree with wholeheartedly but cannot really change at this point. It means we have to get mailbox keys - okay, fine. So, my husband calls the USPS main helpline and gives them our street address and zip code. We figure it will be the post office that's less than a mile from us. But no, it'll actually be the post office almost two miles from us. We scratch our heads, move on (probably a zip code thing). He then calls the post office in question to find out what we need to bring with us.
Four calls later, he finds out. The first three calls took place at 9:15, 9:30, and 10:30am, and all were endless ringing and no picking up (not even an automated info voice message, or a voice mail box!). The fourth call is answered with a curt "hello" - no identification that this is, in fact, the post office picking up the phone and not Joe Sixpack on Mockingbird Lane. We need proof of ownership of our home and photo ID to get the key.
(WITNESS THE INSANITY - it takes PHOTO ID to get a mailbox key, but not to VOTE.)
So my husband goes up to the post office this afternoon. After witnessing a lot of incompetence and also consumer ignorance while standing in line for half an hour, he makes it to the counter only to discover that keys must be ordered.
When will they get here? Maybe Friday, but probably next week. Will they call us or notify us in some way? No, we just have to call (and they don't ANSWER THE PHONE) and find out that way.
Seriously? It's a damned good thing we have online bill pay.
The US Postal Service is antiquated and exemplifies the folly of bureaucracy and government waste. Can someone explain to me why it is that employees of the federal government are able to join a union and are able to strike? Aside from that, FedEx and UPS (along with other independent delivery chains) do a much more efficient job and are far friendlier to their customers.
This one instance was not enough to sour me on the USPS, but years of dealing with long lines (with one or two clerks at the counter!), lost mail, delayed mail, rudeness, and red tape have done me in. I'm ready for the abolition of the USPS.
