Usps: A Model of Inefficiency

     Gone are the days of reliable mail from the United States. Gone are the days when we were happy to send out boxes to family and friends. No longer does the motto “Neither rain nor the gloom of night” have any place in the postal delivery service of the United States of America. The glory of the Pony Express Riders has been tarnished by the ineptitude of the current management.

     Like many businesses they got too full of themselves and let things get out of hand. It seems that they too are on the list of bailouts the rest of the government has to take care of. They tried a stopgap measure by closing small post offices, thus making people go further to get something they are paying more and more for all the time. “Less service at a higher price” should be their new slogan. Next they tried firing 40,000 employees, employees that had been injured on the job and now were considered partially disabled. Yes fire the handicapped and keep the incompetent running things. Get rid of a their one job they can do fine like sorting mail but can’t go out and deliver it while keeping the able bodied ones hanging round the offices doing next to nothing. Get rid of the ones that have a harder time finding a new job since they have limited mobility and keep the higher ups that have run the business into the ground. Fire all those people then start making television commercials advertising something they’ve had for a long time so people would think it’s new and cheap. If you can stuff 70 pounds of anything into one of the boxes they show I’d be amazed. They don’t even show the smallest box from the side, it’s not much bigger then a book and the weight limit on that is 4 pounds. To top that off you can get all the boxes you need from them free and delivered free. Another hemorrhage in a eviscerating company.

      Having overpaid into the pre-retirement funds and ignoring the obvious changes happening in the world they whistled a merry tune until too late. Their debt increased so fast they couldn’t keep up and tried to make major changes without the thoughts of the consequences. They cry that they will be 15 billion dollars in debt this year, a pathetic cry that used to make 6 billion in profit, nothing to sneeze at for a so-called “non-profit” organization. The money leaks away, the bosses cry help. They look everywhere but themselves. They should cut the jobs that are redundant, take a pay cut if need. CEOs, bosses or whatever you call them really don’t need to make millions of dollars a year for sitting on their thumbs. All those in charge should have been fired for ineptitude and those with any brains hired or promoted to replace them. That would entail some higher ups stepping in and being able to see the problems and have the gall to do something so drastic. Yet here we are,  17% of the postal workers fired, 700 post offices closed, Saturday mail delivery has a death sentence and most likely will die a silent death since no one wants to get involved and speak up.

     I know our local post office had to be one of the worst around. Having just spent over $10,000 on landscaping plus unknown amounts refurbishing the lobby it’s as slow as ever and has lost the atmosphere it once had. Fire a worker; reseed the lawn and plant expensive plants. Someone sure has screwed up priorities. If you paint a turd it’s still a turd underneath and will stink when the heat is on.

    It just shows you that incompetence will rise to the top while those that work hard get ground down on the bottom.