The United States Postal Service
The United States Postal service is considering consolidating or closing hundreds of local facilities. I have an idea – close them all. The country doesn’t need anymore physical junk-mail, we have spam. We don’t need you to deliver our bills, we have the Internet. And in the rare occasion that I send a package to someone, I have UPS. It’s been a nice 234 year ride but the time has come to exit road left. This opinion is mostly derived from the fact that, like many government agencies, the United States Postal Service sucks. Walk into most Post Offices today and you feel like you walked into Mayberry… before Barney Fife was born. That was fine 60 years ago but it’s 2009! The United States Postal service is inevitably going to fail because of technological advances that make its services obsolete. But if the Postmaster General is looking for some ways to keep the USPS a float for a few more years here are some suggestions:
- Get a better tracking system. The fact that I can not find out exactly where my package is in today’s day and age is simply inexcusable.
- During the busiest time of day when most people visit the Post Office, you know lunch-time … stop letting all of your employees go on their lunch break!
- Please, stop asking me if I have “anything hazardous, perishable, liquid or fragile” in my package. You just wasted 15 minutes of my time talking to Joe Bob about his weekend, his kids and how the weather is, don’t waste another 8 seconds asking me if I’m shipping a gallon of Poland Spring.
- Stop raising your rates! The only reason most people use the Post Office is because of the cheaper rates. If you raise the price of a stamp every other day that kind of defeats the purpose don’t you think?
- Stop trying to sell me New York Yankee World Series plaques from 2005. You’re the Post Office not a gift shop.
- Lose that annoying Post Office smell.
- Bring back The Pony Express. If you’re going to take forever to deliver my mail I might as well get a kick out of it when it finally arrives.
Now don’t get me wrong, I feel for the thousands of Post Office employees who would lose their jobs if the USPS goes under. I really do. But times are changing and some things weren’t made to stick around forever, just ask the newspaper industry.
