It’s kind of quaintly anachronstic to say that I’m sitting at home on Saturday morning waiting for the postman. It’s also kind of a pain in the ass because I have other things I’d rather be doing.
I’m waiting here because there’s something coming that I’ll have to sign for and it will be an even bigger pain in the ass if I miss delivery and have to go in and pick it up next week. Since I live and work thirty miles apart, and since the post office closes at 5:00, it’s not like I can just pop over on my lunch hour. I’m addition to waiting in the interminable line and interacting with the rude, surly postal workers, I’d also have to take time off from work.
All of which is indicative of why the postal service is in trouble now. The fact that it makes even its premium services like Express Mail so inconvenient through limited hours, etc. demonstrates why FedEx and UPS are winning that battle. At least they manage to keep some staff on hand so you can pick up a fucking envelope after work.
Yeah, I realize that postal rants are just too easy, but it’s been a while since I did one.
Oddly, I’ve come to the opposite conclusion. At least the Postal Service will put your package in this thing called a “mailbox”, if it fits, rather than having a business model rooted in the Leave It to Beaver era that assumes there will be a stay-at-home housewife to accept delivery at the door. And even if it does end up waiting for me at the post office, the neighborhood post office is closer than the UPS depot, which inevitably is somewhere in the midst of an industrial neighborhood nowhere near my home.
And one place I’ve lived (Portland, OR) has such horrible UPS service that I fought battles with shippers to get them to ship Parcel Post or Priority Mail. UPS would do things like leave their spoor (my term for the notices that say they were here when you weren’t) without even knocking (I wasted a whole day sitting at home on that one), and letting a “3 day” package sit in their local warehouse for most of a week collecting dust before taking it out for delivery.
The big issue is with things that have to be signed for. Since that housewife is never there for the delivery (so these things almost ALWAYS have to be picked up later) it’s a big plus that FedEx and UPS have pickup available later at night than USPS. Granted, it’s usually not in as convenient a location (although it was nice when I lived pretty much next door to the big FedEx depot in SF) but the hours are what’s important to me.