A Rant Regarding The Post Awful

[dglenn]

I'm going to take a break from a) the various things I ought to be doing and b) the more difficult political entry I'm in the middle of working on (which I want to phrase very carefully, and which I've started and abandoned three times in the past couple months), to toss out something easy to write: a complaint about my local Post Office.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

The post office in West Medford, Mass., has a sign claiming that anyone entering the place "consents" to having themselves and their packages searched. This is, of course, completely illegal.

[leiacat]

We happen to be an unpopular route for carriers - it's longer than it should be, so anyone with the least seniority gets to avoid doing it, and so we're stuck with whichever lucky person happens to be in the bottom of the ladder that day. As a result, we've had all sorts of trouble, from at one point most of my letters being returned to sender (which I realized after my credit card called me to ask me where did I move to and how come I didn't tell them) to packages missing with no way to trace on whose watch they may have gone away. Because I'm in the suburbia where packages don't tend to get stolen by random passers-by, odds are it's the carriers who took them for a walk, too, although there's always a chance that one of the local kids might have gotten bored. The number of times that a slip (or a package) gets attached to the door without so much as a knock is staggering - I'm usually home in daytime, my computer room is positioned such that I can usually hear the screen being opened, so if I miss a delivery, odds are they didn't

[elbowfetish]

Different letter carriers to my house (Canada Post) are all illiterate. They randomly deliver other people's mail to us and randomly give our checks, bills, etc. to other people. It's about 50/50 whether our mail will come to us. Then another 50/50 if the person who gets it (different address on the same street, maybe apartment number that matches our street address, or completely random) cares enough to drive it over to our house

[realinterrobang]

That's why Canada Post shouldn't have been dechartered as a Crown Corporation. The government is good at running things, even at a loss, especially if those things are essential services. (That was sort of the whole point of Air Canada, once upon a time.) Private businesses won't do it if there's no profit incentive in it, which is why the privatised Canada Post is trying to get out of the business.

In my area, Canada Post is the reliable one, and I don't trust the couriers as far as I can throw them, since the couriers (FedEx, Purolator, etc) are the ones that are as like as not to pull the trick Glenn's talking about -- leave a "Sorry you weren't home" slip on your door and hightail it out of there before you've even had time to think, "Did I just hear footsteps on the porch?" Very occasionally one of them will knock, but I haven't yet had one that was clueful enough to figure out a mechanical doorbell. (Oh, gee, it's so complicated... Instead of pressing a button, you actually have to turn a little brass paddle! Be still my

[chienne_folle]

I lived in Chicago during the time when it was discovered that many letter carriers were throwing our mail down storm drains or stuffing it into closets at their houses.

I think it's awful that your carrier didn't bother to ring your doorbell, but hey -- at least the package was on your front steps and not down a storm drain!

So, what was in the damned thing, after all this fuss?

[dglenn]

A mirror that looks just like a dental mirror except for the labeling on the package that says "not for dental use"; with three different sizes of mirror that can be screwed onto the handle.

And yes, as annoying as my problems with the local Post Office are, it could be -- and in other places has been -- worse.

[scarlettj9]

Two words: Rate Increase! Just my 2 cents. ;)

[dglenn]

Ouch.