Going Postal!

Please Mister Postman, look and see
Is there a letter, a letter for me?

                                    Lyrics from “Please, Mr. Postman"

The United States Postal Service is not what it used to be, and that is not a good thing. Back in the day, the USPS delivered mail in a timely, efficient manner. The cost was reasonable. Yeah, their operations lost money every year, but since it was subsidized by the American taxpayer, most of us weren’t too concerned as long as we received our mail. They continue to operate in the red to this day, so nothing is new there.

Service has suffered for the sake of budget. Since we cannot depend on the USPS to deliver our mail in a timely manner, we must convert to automatic bill pay for utilities, insurance, and other important time-sensitive remittances. This results in even less revenue for the postal system, since the billing statement is no longer being mailed, nor is the payment.

Here are some recent experiences we have had. Last October, the wife mailed out  checks for our homeowners insurance premium, credit card payment and electric bill payment a week and a half prior to their due dates. They were all mailed on the same day. They had a minimum of ten business days to reach their Ohio destinations from our little post office on the western side of the Buckeye State. 

I began receiving emails from our home insurer warning of the approaching payment deadline. To make a long story short, we ended up paying our homeowners insurance premium online with a credit card two days late. The electric bill and credit card payment were also late, as it took 14 business days for the payments to reach their destinations. Yes, 14 DAYS TO GET TO ANOTHER ADDRESS IN OHIO! This is outrageously poor mail service. We ended up receiving a check back from our insurer since we paid our premium twice due to the USPS’s dismal service.

All of our area's mail is taken by a contractor to be sorted in a processing center in Columbus, Ohio. I can’t be certain, but it appears that the majority of problems occur in Columbus. Some of the issues are due to poor workers and practices, and some are certainly the result of dishonest employees. For example, I always send my sister a $25 restaurant gift card for her birthday. In 2016, she never received her birthday card or the gift card. I decided to send her cash for her most recent birthday since it would be much harder to detect by feel. Guess what? It arrived safely, since the postal employee thieves couldn’t feel the gift card inside.

A friend recently commented that coworkers collected money for an ailing employee, and sent a greeting card containing a $100 prepaid VISA card. The greeting card arrived, sliced open at the top, and then taped closed. The VISA card was missing, of course. Fortunately, they kept a receipt and cancelled the card before it could be used.

We all understand that the postal service gets busy at the holidays. It shouldn't be as big of a deal as it once was, since the volume of first class holiday mail has been decreasing each year. Knowing that the post office cannot be trusted with gift cards, we sent my sister and my niece some cash tucked inside their Christmas card this year. We mailed them on December 15, and they received them on December 29. It took two weeks to get from one side of Ohio to the other. Oh, I almost forgot – there was no postmark on either card! Hey, we were just happy they arrived with the cash intact!

We received a Christmas card yesterday. Yep, we got a Christmas card on January 16. It was postmarked December 21, and was mailed from just across the Ohio River. You likely have your own horror stories if your mail is processed though Columbus.

As bad as the USPS is, I recently applied for a job there. Sure, I’m retired, but working four hours per day at our local post office here in Podunk was a dream job. It was six days per week, but the job was putting mail in the post office boxes, selling stamps and money orders, accepting packages, and all of the other window service duties at a one-person postal operation. You got to help people and interact with the public. It sounded like THE ideal retirement job to me! And, it paid $16.67 an hour!

I had to create an online profile, apply for the job online, and take an online test. I passed the online assessment, and was invited to take a competitive test in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I passed this proctored online exam, and received an email that I had an interview right after Thanksgiving.

Notice that everything so far has been done online. All correspondence has been via email. Anyone else find this to be ironic? Well, so was the Podunk post office job. While the duties and hours described for the hometown post office were what I had in mind, the successful candidate was also expected to assist in sorting mail at other post offices within the 458XX zip code area. If it was just occasional extra work, it might not be so bad. In the interview email, it pretty much said that you WILL work whenever and wherever we need you in addition to your hometown post office gig. The previous postal clerk said she had to work at 4:30 AM sometimes, go home for an hour, and then do her local post office job. During the holidays, she had to work Sundays at the largest area post office sorting packages. While a young person might find this appealing, this retired teacher did not!

I have a long-term substitute teaching job coming up in a couple of months. It is at my old school, too. It will feel strange to go back to my old job for a while, but this job is more to my liking. No evenings, no weekends, and knowing exactly when and where I will work. All correspondence between me and the school has been done electronically or in person. I suppose that as long as I don’t have to depend on the USPS, things might just go smoothly.