A longtime postal worker offers his perspective (anonymously, else he’d lose that fraught but coveted job) on five-day delivery and the future of the mail.
My knee-jerk reaction to five-day mail delivery was that it gave me another day not to open bills and recycle junk.
A lot of people like to get their mail on Saturdays. They will come out and get the mail. You can establish a little rapport.
Well, that rapport’s about to end, unless Congress steps in. Why did the U.S. Postal Service make this decision?
It was proposed as a cost-cutting measure, as a result of declining mail volume. But of course it isn’t as simple as that. You will have to change staffing, and you’ll have a very uneven workload. Mondays, you’ll have pent-up volume and the savings will be offset by having to pay overtime. I think it will cost more. And people are going to start calling in sick on Mondays and Tuesdays!
The USPS claims it’s “facing unprecedented volume declines and a projected $238 billion shortfall during the next decade.”
The volume had gone down, but I think we are seeing a turnaround now. We are picking up a huge amount of Netflix mail; also, people are shopping online more, and a lot of the residential delivery business goes to the postal service. UPS likes to concentrate in dense urban areas. They leave the postal service to drive down the country lane to Aunt Minnie’s house.
Just how did the five-day plan originate?
Someone way up the chain—maybe the Postmaster, I don’t know—wanted to look like he was thinking hard, so he threw this idea out there. Some say after he leaves, he will get a cushy spot at UPS or Fed Ex, as the privatization continues. But the U.S. Postal Service is a government entity! You don’t just stop what you are doing because you want to save money. The post office is about providing service!
It already feels more like a business than it used to, though.
Back in July 1970, they reorganized the postal service. It went from a cabinet post to a quasi-governmental agency, and that’s when this corporate, commercialized strain entered.
Should it lose all governmental standing, and just go private-sector?
You have those, I’m sure, who would love to see the U.S. Postal Service done away with. It is seen by many as the Temple of Incompetency. But it’s one of the original institutions, and it predates the Constitution. It was founded by Ben Franklin. It’s a universal service the government provides to bind the states together.
What do you think would happen if it turned that noble task over to private companies?
You would immediately be paying higher costs to get that mail to Aunt Minnie. There would be geographic inequities. If you lived in a rural area, you would immediately be disadvantaged. I think, too, there would be certain neighborhoods where they wouldn’t go. And I think everyone across the board would pay more for the service.
Incidentally, why did the jokes about “going postal” have such sticking power? Every industry has its mass murderers…
It’s a top-down culture: ‘I’m telling you to do this now, no matter how stupid it is.’ After a period of time, people snap.
Do you think the five-day plan is another stupid idea?
It’s just a further outgrowth of just looking at one facet of the situation.
Yeah, but the agency’s going broke. How would you save money?
Well, it probably wouldn’t make Washington happy, but I’d tell the carrier, ‘Here’s your route, do it, and when you are done, go home.’ That could cut a lot of costs. They did it for a while, and it was fabulously successful, but it eliminated the need for supervision. And they love to have lots of overseers.
Now, though, they’re computerizing that oversight.
Yeah. They have gotten to the point where they are putting bar codes out there to see where you are at any given point. They paste them on certain mailboxes, and you have to scan them when you arrive. They don’t care if all the mail is delivered; they care if you scan the bar code.
How are the working conditions?
They are keeping the workload a little bit beyond what is doable. The average age of a carrier is around 53. The routes are getting longer, and the mail’s getting heavier, as first-class mail declines and parcels increase.
And then there’s all that rain and snow and gloom of night… You sure you like your job?
Bad weather’s always better than a bad boss.
