Why the U.S. Postal Service is About as Worthless as…

Posted on February 22nd, 2006 by Christine.
Categories: Pissed Off & Proud of It.

I haven’t had a lot to rant about these past few weeks… since that time I was sick and just wanted some freaking Sudafed (which was way too much to ask of… oh… a drug store), I haven’t felt passionately angry about anything (barring Christopher of course).
But today… well… today is different.

Let’s backtrack so you can see exactly where the source of my aggravation began. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Postal service (being the ultra-efficient institution they are) raised the price of domestic letter-sized postage stamps from 37 cents to 39 cents. Okay… fine… whatever. I had a bunch of 37 cent stamps (as many people did) and if you do that math in your head… you can figure out that I would need to buy some 2 cent stamps to go with my 37 cent stamps to accomodate the price increase.

The bright, knowledgeable people who run the post office might have… and I stress might have… predicted that the need for 2 cent stamps would increase once the postage was raised by 2 cents. You might also anticipate that these brilliant individuals would then produce a surplus of 2 cent stamps, knowing the demand would increase. Did they?

No…

As a matter of fact, there weren’t 2 cent stamps anywhere. Even the post office branches didn’t have any. Coincidence? Poor planning? Conspiracy? What?

So I did what most people did. I knowingly took a 35 cent loss on every letter I sent by placing two 37 cent stamps on the envelope. Not a big deal… I wouldn’t even have complained if what happened today didn’t happen.

Today… I go out to my mailbox and find a birthday card I sent to my friend three and a half weeks ago sitting there. There’s a big yellow sticker on the front that reads, “Return to Sender. Undeliverable Address. Unable to Forward.”

Hrmmm…. ????

I look at the address wondering if I’d accidentally left off the zip code… or scribbled… or transposed numbers. Nope. My perfect, neat, pretty, cheerleader-style handwriting stretches across the card. And the zip code is there. And the address is 100% correct.

I even call my friend and confirm the address. Sure enough… that address is perfect. So why then… did the post office not just deliver it to that particular address? Especially with that extra incentive of the additional 35 cents? And here’s a better question… where the hell did this card go for three and a half weeks? Did someone look at that envelope and decide to carry it around for almost a month? Did it fall behind some big sorting machine? Did someone file it in the wrong file? Did it not pass the anthrax-detection? Where the fuck was that letter for three weeks and why didn’t anyone at the post office put it in the pile that went to the correct state, correct city, correct zip, correct address, and correct apartment?

Why?!

And if I felt like complaining… and honestly, I kind of do… who the hell do I complain to? A manager? The Secretary of Postal Services? A million dollars says whoever I talk to about the issue of the post office being unable to deliver a piece of mail even though I’ve provided all the information necessary to make sure that mail gets delivered, will probably not be able to tell me why it didn’t get delivered. They won’t know where the break down in the system happened. They won’t be able to fix the problem. And they won’t be able to assure me it’ll never happen again. So why bother complaining???

So the next time I hear the “postal service” complain that they have to raise prices because people now use email, or automatic debit, or pay by phone, or order “mail-order” items online… I will tell them to shut the hell up. There’s a reason people avoid using snail mail. It’s not reliable. What amazes me… is that there are people in this country who can zap microscopic cancer cells in someone’s brain using just a laser. There are people who can solve math equations that are pages and pages long. There are people who can look at a scrap of Homo Habilus’ shin bone and tell us how much meat he ate in his lifetime. And yet… there are people who can’t take a letter with an address written on it and put it in a pile that will eventually go to that place.

I want to understand… but I don’t. You know what… forget that. I don’t really want to understand. I just want the damn Post Office to do the ONLY JOB they were designed to do. Stop selling oversized envelopes with Poinsettas on them. Stop selling Elvis stickers. Stop dispersing little coupon books for people who are new to the neighborhood. Just DELIVER THE GODDAM LETTERS.

Ahhhh… I feel better now.

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