As it turns out, I do have something I want to say. The USPS is raising the rates on stamps from 68 to 73 cents, a price so low that there isn’t even a key on your computer to denote cents like there is a dollar sign (you have to hold down alt and type 0162 like this ¢). Having said that, they will get a rash of shit by people who like to be pissed off about everything, so here is a little pushback.
The United States Postal Service, even under Trump shitlord Louise DeJoy, is such an amazing feat of logistics that it should STILL be considered a modern marvel and should probably even be featured in the next Sid Meiers Civilization. It’s fucking mindboggling if you really sit and think about it. For 73 cents you can take a letter from where ever the fuck you are in the country and have it delivered to anywhere else in the country in just a few days.
Yes we all hear horror stories about the post office, but those are few and far between when you consider the sheer volume and enormity of the operation. Do you know how many places there are? And not just remote places. But just weird back alleys in any city with apartments nowhere near where you would think anyone would live. And they get their mail on the daily.
So yeah. It’s fucking miraculous. It’s as big a deal and as much a modern marvel as the fact that the vast majority of us have water piped directly into our homes that we can drink straight from the tap. Fucking amazing.
Joy in FL
I absolutely agree.
And some of the postage stamps are really cool!
Kristine
I’ve bought more stamps than I’ll use in a year because they’re so pretty. Halloween stamps with foil accents. T. rex. Tulips.
The latest postcard stamps I bought have sailboats.
middlelee
I’m 84 years old and have been using the postal service since I was 5 years old. At age 5 I was required to write thank you notes and write letters to my grandmothers. To this day I still write letters, send birthday and Christmas cards, and send a variety of note cards to friends and family.
I can remember air mail stamps.
In all these years I have had one mistake made by the postal service. A Christmas card was delivered a year late because the card slid down behind something in the post office and until they moved whatever, the card was hidden.
I think our postal service is fabulous.
Trivia Man
Logistics is an absolutely underrated modern marvel. As John doubtless knows, the US Army is an epic, historic, juggernaut in large part due to its logistic capabilities. Rome had the same advantage, Byzantium also. And Napolean … until he didn’t. The US postal service is more of the same.
My favorite pie in the sky wish, that could be done once DeJoy gets kicked to the curb, is allow the USPS to act as a bank as the postal service does in many other countries. Chop off Wells Fargo et al at the knees and improve the lives of millions of people instantly.
Indycat32
I love the post office. I can order fabric from a shop in San Diego and two days after they fill the order it arrives in Indianapolis, all for the low, low price of $5.99.
chrisanthemama
The U.S. Postal Service, the DMV, and Social Security–three things that people bitch about, and that I’ve never had a problem with.
schrodingers_cat
I wouldn’t be able to get artist grade supplies from eBay without USPS.
I finished the WIP that I posted yesterday. Colored with Prismacolor Premiers 132 set. I got my all my sets of Prismacolor premiers ( I have the 48, 132 and 150 sets) from eBay!
Harrison Wesley
No argument from me; I’m a big fan of USPS. For fifteen years I lived at 305 N. 13th Street in Philadelphia; during that same time there was another person with the same name as me (except for one letter) living at 301 S. 13th Street. Same ZIP code. How often did our mail get mixed up? Once. In fifteen years.
And I’d like to see them bring back postal banking, too.
Bitter Scribe
I can’t believe COMNEBOL was crass enough to make Angel Di Maria’s kids wear T-shirts for Mercado Libre, whatever the hell that is. Is there no shame or limit to their greed?
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: That’s really lovely.
pat
We have a cable restricting access to our driveway and therefore to our mail box because they will be putting in curb and gutter on our street next week. Everyone else in this position has a mailbox in a line next to the street but it took a couple days for ours to be labeled.
Our mailman/woman actually climbed over that cable and came to our mailbox in our driveway with our mail, unfortunately mostly junk…… but I expect to receive a new passport shortly, and I don’t know what we would do without the mail service!!!
Ohio Mom
Did I read this somewhere or make it up — the Constitution mandates a post office because you can’t really have freedom of speech if you can’t communicate your ideas and thoughts with others — after all, back then there was no other way to communicate with someone who was any distance away.
I also think somewhere in there is something implied about privacy — no one except the recipient opens your envelope to see what you wrote (well, unless you’re in jail or live with someone who is nosy).
Anyway, I had no idea postage went up, once again we see that this really is a full service blog.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: Thanks! I am glad you like it.
Llelldorin
On a Mac it’s a little easier — Option-4 is ¢.
Also, yes, the Post Office is legitimately amazing.
Trivia Man
@Ohio Mom: We still pay many bills with a stamp and envelope but I just buy the sheets and don’t look at the price. I only know of the increase because Water Girl had a push to donate stamps for postcards. Reach out to her if you want to donate or write or both!
rikyrah
I love buying my stamps. I keep them in my wallet. Have three different kinds at any time.
Torrey
I totally agree, particularly now, while we’ve got daily excessive heat warnings, and still the mail gets delivered. People park smack in front of mailboxes, and still the mail gets delivered. One of the post offices near me has been in a state of really unacceptable disrepair for at least the last two decades–I’m talking doors falling off cabinets, floors that will never look clean again, walls that haven’t been repainted in (again) decades. The postal workers really deserve a better place to work. Fortunately, the building has finally been renovated, and it’s still grim, but at least more spacious and clean and the appurtenances are new.
Citizen Dave
I also love the postal service. Much more so when I did a fair amount of music trading (all online now). I do think though, given the dearth of real mail, home delivery should go to 3 days a week.
Joy in FL
@schrodingers_cat: Your art is beautiful. I love the colors, and the angle you gave the viewer. It’s really pleasing!
I also love Prismacolors. They make a huge difference!
CaseyL
Thanks to postcarding, I’ve seen many strange addresses, and it is indeed a marvel that the mail gets there mostly with no hiccups.
@Ohio Mom: The Constitution does mandate a government postal service. The GOP idea is to make it so awful no one uses it, which they have not yet succeeded in doing.
The Patent Office is also mandated by the Constitution, to encourage innovation and economic growth by individuals. Good luck these days getting a patent as an individual inventor (unless it’s something very low tech), and you’ll need even more luck to market it. We make fun of the “As Seen on TV” ads and products, but I think that’s what most of them are: things individual inventors came up with.
Captain C
I’m convinced that at least half of all ‘lost in the mail’ stories are actually cases of ‘I didn’t send it in the first place but don’t want to admit it.’
chemiclord
(Former Postal Clerk speaking here) There are a ton of problems with the Postal Service. That’s admittedly so. For example, the guys at the top are in many cases severely understaffing facilities, making employees do more and more with less and less.
And yet, despite what feels like active sabotage on the part of DeJoy and the Board of Governors, the machine keeps working in an incredible testament to the strength of its foundation.
But I really don’t know how much longer that foundation is going to hold. More and more people like me are checking out, which is part of the reason why a second Trump term would be relatively disastrous.
JerseyBeard
I’ve been telling my kids since they were tiny: I like paying my taxes, they buy me civilization. USPS deserves more support. And better leadership.
Trivia Man
@Citizen Dave: Dead tapes then Dead CDs – lots of great music that way, all USPS.
Quiltingfool
I don’t have any complaints about the USPS; I have mailed many quilts and they’ve always arrived and usually in a week or less!
I am very fond of my post office ladies. My post office is in a very tiny town and the ladies are just delightful. And very efficient, too.
John Revolta
I’ll tell you what is a real modern marvel- today’s weather forecasts. When I was growing up you’d get some guy on the nightly news. He had a pretty fair chance of getting tomorrow’s weather right. Day after that, he’d be 50/50. Anything after that, your guess was as good as his.
It’s a great example of how stuff can develop unexpectedly out of scientific research. Basically we owe modern weather forecasting to SPUTNIK.
H.E.Wolf
During the summer heat, we’ve been putting bottled water in the freezer for an hour and then putting a couple of the bottles into our mailbox with a “please help yourself” note. Thank you to whomever of the jackals provided that idea.
We accidentally bought the 8-oz. size, but our mail carrier was pleased. Apparently those are the exact right size to fit into a USPS shirt pocket!
NotMax
An increase of a nickel is too big a jump all at once. IMHO.
Trivia:
In Victorian and Edwardian era London, mail was delivered multiple times per day.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Quiltingfool:
Back when we were in Central Misery, our unincorporated historic district consisted of around 60 people and a Post Office. We had 2 post mistresses there in the 22+ years we lived there.
They were great, customer-oriented people and a vast benefit to the community.
The modern GQP has been trying to dismantle the Post Office for my entire adult life for 2 reasons: a) outsource everything for private profit (alas, a neoliberal economic outlook that infects far to many parts of the Dem party), and b) it a daily example of government that works and impacts peoples lives.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: In Mumbai when I was growing up, mail used to be delivered twice a day.
H.E.Wolf
Some years ago, I was helping my mom clean out some office drawers, and we found a file folder with half-a-dozen sheets of unused, old-style lick-and-stick stamps that my late father had saved.
The postal rates had gone up just enough that 2 of the old stamps would meet the prices that were current. Reimbursed my mom for the whole batch, and for months whenever I mailed something, I had happy memories of my dad.
NotMax
@John Revolta‘
Typical Hawaii weather report:
“Tomorrow there will be periods of showers or there won’t.”
;)
NotMax
Still rankles that the burg where I hang my hat lost its ZIP code and now shares one with a neighboring town.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Neighbor across the street just hit the car of the neighbor next to me. He was backing out of his driveway in his RAM truck and didn’t look out the back window as he was doing so. I guessed this when I saw that his open tailgate had crumpled in the driver side rear quarter and slid up the side of the rear roof pillar, gouging it all of the way. If he had looked out of his back window he would have seen that his tailgate was open. Damned driver aids…lol!
He got out of his truck, closed the tailgate, looked at the neighbors car, got in his truck and drove away. I went out and looked at the damage, then notified the neighbor of what had happened. His wife and himself are taking off on a trip for the next week and he had just cleaned up the car. It’s an immaculate 2016 Corolla but not so much now.
SoupCatcher
Here in the SF bay area, often the postal clerk is an adult English language learner. There is a certain type of person that can’t stand interacting with people who speak English with an accent, and I’ve seen some exceedingly poor behavior on the part of customers.
Timill
@NotMax: Not just then, and not just London: in Arthur Ransome’s “Coot Club”, written in the 1930s, one driver of the plot is that a postcard posted in a village in the morning will be delivered in another village some 30 miles away that afternoon.
Mike in NC
I sell a lot of unwanted stuff that I and my neighbors have on eBay, so I go to the local post office darn near every day. Great people.
Ealbert
My story is “things only a government” would do: when we moved into our house forty years ago or so, (our house is in the original part of the village) the post office was about a block away (one half block to Main Street and then one half block down Main Street). As a result of very old rules, we lived TOO CLOSE to the post office to have our mail delivered to us. We had to walk the block down to the post office to either get it from our post office box or pick it up under general delivery. If we had lived another block down the street they would have delivered it to our house. Ten to fifteen years ago the moved the post office to a new and larger location, so now we DO get our mail delivered to our house.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Talk about coincidence. I was having a meeting with a couple of neighbors on my front porch a couple of hours ago. Parked in front of my house is the truck of a neighbor 2 doors down.
A truck or SUV pulls up in front of the house forward of my neighbor’s truck. It pauses for maybe 10-15 seconds, not unusual given the amount of gig driving shit that goes on here.
They then back up, turning sharply (also a thing here as people clearly hate driving around the block so would rather block cars coming down the street so they can make their 3-point turnaround) and plow into my neighbor’s truck.
The three of us on the porch immediately get up to get a better view of the license plate because we knew w/o saying that the shits would drive off.
And they did. We *think* we got the license plate. I went over, informed my neighbor who was then gonna call the non-emergency number.
cmorenc
@Odie Hugh Manatee: According to your description of what happened, the across-the street truck neighbor just committed the criminal offense of hit-and-run property damage by simply driving off from having just wrecked your other neighbor’s car – you said he just drove off after seeing the obvious damage he had caused. Unless other neighbor whose car he wrecked wasn’t home and truck guy left a note clearly explaining what happened, including his insurance information – but by your description of his behavior he did not do so, but instead thought no one witnessed it, especially if his tailgate only suffered negligible visible damage.
Your neighbor needs to promptly call police to make a report – especially if the reason truck guy skipped out is his own insurance had lapsed, because ability to positively ID the other car in a police report is usually requisite for your neighbor whose car was wrecked to invoke their own insurance company’s uninsured motorist coverage, completely aside from the potential hit-and-run criminal & civil case.
SomeRandomGuy
Republicans hate the USPS because they want to privatize it, so, e.g., Fed Ex can deliver mail in NYC, while the USPS remains the last mile last resort.
A better option would be letting the USPS provide basic banking services (check cashing, savings/checking, wire transfers), while pumping up the ability to provide quick, efficient, delivery services, and providing wireless internet. It would make life better for rural America, and if Republican stories of the invisible hand are accurate, private industry will compete with the USPS to deliver better products, cheaper. Win, win, win, all around, but, it wouldn’t destroy the USPS, so, no go.
unrelatedwaffle
I work directly with data products from USPS. Their data is used across the internet in ways you might not even realize, and it is updated every single month. There are little offices in every county in the US that will answer the phone if you realize some third party product is saying your zip code is in the incorrect county and update that for you. USPS might even surpass the National Weather Service in terms of greedy tech companies basing their entire profit on a massive government data enterprise.
Poe Larity
And here I thought I was still paying 41 cents for my forever stamps.
bad Jim
Back in 1971 my new glasses arrived weeks late. The box was stamped “FOUND IN SUPPOSEDLY EMPTY MAIL BAG”. That situation was evidently common enough to merit its own rubber stamp.
I’m a good enough commemorative stamp buyer to be sent stamp catalogs. I’ve finished off James Webb Telescope, nearly out of Life Magnified, which will be followed by Endangered Species.
dww44
I was and still am a fan of and believer in the USPS. Because of their employment as Rural Route deliverers, 3 of my uncles were able to elevate themselves into the middle class by supplementing their farming income. An aunt was postmistress and manager of her family’s country store inside of which was the post office. With that good “guvmint job” all of them , every one a Republican, likely acquired their first ever health care plans and all retired relatively comfortably.
Nevertheless, mail delivery in most of the state has been a mess for months, thanks to DeJoy’s ongoing efforts to make it function like a private corporation with his focus on cutting costs. He closed two regional processing centers in smaller cities and moved their functions to a new center south of Atlanta with disastrous results. Now virtually every piece of mail in 2/3 of the state gets processed there with an Atlanta postmark. Anything mailed locally goes to Atlanta to get processed and adds 2 days or so in processing time. A year and a half ago he raised P O Box rental rates by 250% resulting in many closures by renters. Likely lost a stream of revenue that’s never gonna come back. And the delivery issues have permanently lost many other customers.
Sen. Ossoff has had to personally intervene as the delivery issues got so bad. I don’t think it will ever recover either. Those of us conspiracy inclined think closure was and is DeJoy’s aim anyways.
Mike E
Is there such thing as an 18¢ stamp? Like an idiot I bought John Oliver’s 55¢ stamps…I think I need some of Norm Gunderson’s 3¢ Mallards.
Mike E
Goal! Argentina scores the Copa America finals 1st goal in the 112th minute. Crazy venue in Miami where the match was delayed an hour due to massive ticketing problems and spectators turned away after spending $1k.
Kayla Rudbek
Your local post office needs to come down to Northern Virginia and teach my local post office how to do things right and proper. My local post office is notorious all the way to Minneapolis (I.e. halfway across the continent) for how screwed up it is. We routinely get checks lost, I’ve had expensive anti-cancer medications get delayed in delivery to the point where Mr. Rudbek and I have gone to the office in person to complain and track down the package, and the only way I send out packages is pre-printed labels because I don’t trust the counter service to process them. And I routinely get mail for the same number on the next cul-de-sac, where the street names are quite different. I still get mail for the previous occupants even though I have been here for over a decade now. This reminds me, it’s probably time to send my congressman another complaint email about this.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cmorenc:
My neighbor ended up going over to his house after truck guy got home and didn’t come over to explain what happened. My neighbor stopped by and thanked me for catching what happened. He told me that he let the guy know that he had done a hit and run but wouldn’t make an issue of it as long as there’s no hassle with the repairs.
The guy admitted his fault and agreed. Not much more for him to say about it other than pay up. I don’t think there will be any issues and the guy has his own business (contractor) so he has insurance.
Thanks for the heads up though! :)
Odie Hugh Manatee
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
My wife and I like to watch Youtube dashcam videos and hit & run in a residential area is pretty much the norm. Good on you folks and I hope you got the right number!
mrmoshpotato
The United Postal Service is AWESOME! And I don’t just say that as a grandson of a mail carrier.
mrmoshpotato
@mrmoshpotato: Can a mod add States?
WTF new phone?
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s beautiful!
NotMax
@Odie Hugh Manatee
One problem with people relying on the info screen showing the back-up camera on some truck models is that the camera is located on the tailgate, such that if the tailgate is lowered the view the camera shows is pointing straight down at the ground/pavement.
Ruckus
@chrisanthemama:
The CA DMV used to be a bit of a pain in the backside but for the last 2 or 3 decades it’s been just fine. USPS and SS have been flawless for me
As for stamps I have a couple sheets of historic train stations stamps.
cain
@SomeRandomGuy:
The GOP hate it as it is an example of govt working. Efficiently.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@NotMax:
He hauls a trailer a lot and I bet he just used his mirrors backing out, rather than taking the trouble to turn his head and look over his right shoulder and out the back window at least once.
I use all of my mirrors when backing and pretty much ignore the backup cam other than to glance to see if anything is moving behind me before changing to looking out the mirrors and then starting to back.
The rear window isn’t a decoration…lol!
LanceThruster
I agree and it puts a Bernie proposal I recall in perspective. Something about post offices being allowed to provide basic banking services to poor and underserved communities. It would be too depressing for me to try to calculate the times I paid a hefty service fee because my account balance had dropped below their minimum required. Maybe a good lesson for children today. After instilling in them the lessons of saving, and frugality, and delayed gratification, and compound interest… give Junior $100 to open a BofA savings account. At $15 a month service fee for balances under $1200.00, unless you have a direct deposit setup for whatever income you have (Why didn’t you just direct deposit your allowance, Ju ior? Oh, right. Not in check form). At around the 8mos mark, Junior would on the bank money. Gone are the days when a paltry sum would amass to a fortune if you were in cryogenic sleep and went to retrieve it having been untouched for so long. Even if it had compounded, inflation would likely have resulted in its value having change little despite its apparent growth not adjusted for inflation.
The reason why nickel and diming those it adversely affects the most is so lucrative, is because there are so many of them and an easy pool to fleece. They ain’t got no lobby. It’s the inverse of comping high rollers. The banks would still fight giving them an option where the banks could not continue to profit from their laughably low funds, and for them to not continue being raked over the coals would be wrong because FVCK THEM, THATS WHY! Shareholders über alles. If Glob had not wanted the sheep to be sheered, he wouldn’t have made so many to be preyed upon.
Corporate charters used to be issued with operating in the public good or risked not being renew. They’re not only too big to fail, they’re to powerful to rein in their rapaciousness and averice. Add to that, they’re people when that designation works to their advantage, but an entity that escapes accountability for criminal activity, including individual corporate officers save those rare instances, that they might as well be thought of as having been issued a license to kill.
If the max penalty for criminal negligence or worse is a fine, then the law has no more teeth than a traffic ticket even if the penalty is adjusted to the means of a violater like some countries do to try to make the deterrent component still valid, like rich people always speeding in their expensive hot cars.
NotMax
@Odie Hugh Manatee
Yeah, can count the number of times I’ve looked at the back-up camera on the screen on one hand and have fingers to spare.
Always look back over my shoulder.
LanceThruster
I had a bunch of forever stamps get ruined by rain damage (box of sundries stored outside and weatherproofing failed – the high desert UV is brutal on plastic. The food grade plastic in soda bottles is virtually indestructible, yet they don’t make storage containers with the same durability for the most part. I am now a bit of an expert on how materials and dyes hold up)
Any chance of swapping them out for intact ones the way a bill is still honored as long as you have the 51% half?
wjca
Likewise. Not least because all my backup camera shows is a featureless blur.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Timill: And there was an Agatha Christie mystery where part of the plot was what did or didn’t get delivered to a house in the afternoon post. The idea of a morning post and an afternoon post was amazingly quaint to my junior high school self. I had no idea such a thing could be. Or that people could bank at the P.O.
Origuy
@LanceThruster: The USPS has a policy for that, you might be able to exchange them.
Craig
The Post Office is amazing. Friend of mine started working at the GIANT main PO in Oakland, working on keeping sorting machines running. I’ve been by there and seen guys shipping six foot tall racks of live chickens. I had friends who would mail weird shit to me, like rolling pins with a mailing label attached. The post office is amazing. Ben Franklin’s legacy, yes?
BellyCat
There is only one entity with sufficient delivery infrastructure to compete with Amazon: the USPS.
piratedan
btw, anyone seen that announcement from those 40 Dem Congresscritters that were announcing that Biden should step down or was that all smoke?
guachi
@piratedan:
I think Congress has resigned itself to the fact that Biden will be the nominee and as polls continue to show Biden losing every candidate will run by saying they need to be elected to be a check on Trump.
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: Very pretty!
Mike in Pasadena
Agreed on both USPS and potable water delivered to one’s home and office. Both are modern miracles. What have the Romans ever done for us?
Tehanu
John Cole, you are such a voice of common sense, it does my heart good to read you.
Mike in Pasadena
@Citizen Dave: Curious, what is music trading? I’ve never heard the phrase.
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: We used to have that during Christmas card season in Chicago. I remember the second delivery going from daily to just a couple of days percweek.
Citizen Alan
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I don’t remember that one but I do remember a Miss Marple story in which she was tasked with finding out where a missing fortune had been hidden by a crazy rich guy and the only clue was a love letter the guy had written to some woman in his youth. She realized that the love letter was fake because the stamp on the envelope was from 1860 and that the fortune had, in fact, been converted into rare stamps which Crazy Guy glued to a couple of envelopes that the heirs nearly burned out of a misguided desire to preserve the old man’s privacy about his love letters.
Sourmash
What’s the old quote about any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? The Post Office is it. And electricity, which still blows my mind about once a day.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Sourmash: “And electricity, which still blows my mind about once a day.”
You’re using the hairdryer wrong!
Quaker in a Basement
Along these same lines, if you like logistical marvels, you’ll love the Mumbai dabbawallahs:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170114-the-125-year-old-network-that-keeps-mumbai-going
prostratedragon
@Ealbert: So, simultaneously more and less convenient now.
Reverse tool order
Back before Amazon, around 2000, I drove for a regional contract mail carrier in the north SF bay area. Mostly pulling “forty eights” (48’/14.6m enclosed van trailers) plus a single three axle straight truck (≈ 20’ van body) for a few local post offices on separate contracts.
From that limited perspective, I thought USPS worked a little better than it should have. Certainly a lean operation I saw close to the loading docks. Perhaps not obvious, those regional distribution facilities never shut down short of an emergency situation. So 24/365 year after year.
It’s about delivering the mail start to finish, nor is there a lot of unused storage space. On the 3 axle, some post offices got a few carts in and out at 2 or 3 AM with the driver unlocking and relocking the back. A little spooky but no hassles. Other post offices got mail once or twice during open hours.
Usually went well also, with a handful of times I went in the lobby and had a monologue, at volume, about the blocking and delaying effect on their mail delivery of certain improperly parked cars. I mostly don’t like being an overbearing asshole, but there’s a schedule. The culprits knew they did it, so not much lip back.
Back then, the throughput, especially of packages, nearly tripled in the month up to Christmas. That got really crazy, with temporary USPS warehouses, rental truck tractors for us, cubed out (full) trailers, and lines of trucks. So, either the schedule or the load got effed. I was an FNG and not told otherwise, so I always waited for a load. The old hands often bailed after seeing the wait, perhaps to maintain a semblance of the overall schedule.
Finishing with one last thing: prepare your packages for a beating. Here’s how packages were sorted to individual post offices back then. A guy sitting in a chair, with a crowded half circle of maybe 20+ open carts (≈ 3’ x 4’) around him, one per zip code. A steady stream of unsorted full carts brought to him. Under a second to read the zip and launch the package into the unlabeled destination cart. This guy has done it before.
TBone
Our post office in the small town next door still has all of the WPA murals that were done under The New Deal when artists were paid for that work. They are marvelous and inspiring. A wonder to behold and a reminder to everyone that we need bread AND roses. Wish I could post photos of the art.
WPA
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
raven
I worked at the post office for about 6 months. I was a “mail handler” which amounted to unloading rigs. The worst thing was the #2 bags of National Geographic magazines. The high quality paper made them very heavy and they were a bitch to move! It was an awful job, they could work you 12 hour shifts for seven days and the day off would rotate at the end of the week. I was making great money but there was little time to spend it. We’d work all night and then go to a 24 hour tavern and get hammered, crash and get up and do it again. I got fired for “failure to report derogatory action”, on the application they asked if you had gotten a “court martial” in the Army and I checked “no”. I always have thought getting fired fro the PO was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Shortly after I got fired I was in a wreck and broke my back. Those two things forced me to finish college and go in a different direction!
NotMax
@NotMax
To pick up some extra scratch, worked for a short while on the graveyard shift unloading tractor trailers for UPS in a gigundo unheated warehouse.
In Minnesota. In winter.
NotMax
#81 meant to be @raven.
raven
@NotMax: I hated it. There was a Navy Reservist who was our supervisor and he would just stand there in his uniform and watch us like a hawk. It was winter and I’d say I had to start my truck at our lunch break and go out and burn one.We were the return site for the Columbia Record Club and we’d get these giant bins of records we had to move!
Liminal Owl
@NotMax: We live in a ZIP code that many websites think is invalid.
Soprano2
@John Revolta: I agree, when I was a kid they had maps where they put up magnets that indicated sunny or rainy weather. People complain about the forecasts but they’re a lot better now than when I was young. I live in a tornado-prone area, and that part of forecasting is a lot better now too.
NotMax
@raven
Remember the radio ads?
(stentorian announcer) “Not affiliated with the Columbia Broadcasting System or any other institution.”
;)
BRyan
Reading folks’ comments about home mail delivery reminds me to ask — i’ve noticed that around here, whenever a new housing development is built, they put in a block of mailboxes somewhere in the development, and everybody goes there to get their mail; there is no mail delivered directly to homes. Is that just my area, is there a post office rule, is it for the builder’s convenience? As someone who has always had direct-to-my-home delivery, I’m surprised how amenable people seem to be to this new no-delivery practice
Another Scott
@Liminal Owl: I work in DC. About 25% of the websites that demand an account to use it don’t list DC as a “state” in the mailing list options. 🤪
The PO is a wonder.
DeJoy is trying to break it through. Here’s hoping that the ship can be righted quickly when he’s gone.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Soprano2
Up north, budget for chalk must have been through the roof.
Also too, weather report from heck.
“Don’t squat.”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Around our house we call it the United States Milkbone Service. Our local carrier, who has been the same guy for many years, keeps milk bones in his bag that he tosses to pooches as he walks his route.
So Sammy is convinced those trucks and those people exist for the sole purpose of delivering milk bones and he will stop and look hopeful any time we pass one, whether it’s our guy Joe or not.
eclare
Water you can drink from the tap is a fucking miracle. And the first test of any civilization.
NotMax
@BRyan
And then there’s a North Carolina business development.
NotMax
@eclare
At the turn of the century one of the networks aired a program on “greatest achievements of the 20th century.”
Nowhere, not even alluded to, was any mention of home and commercial refrigeration.
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: that is glorious 👏
Another Scott
@NotMax: One of my first jobs was working in the mail room of a company that did paperwork for gift rewards for salesmen for car dealers and similar businesses. Lots and lots of mail going in and out every day. I once helped with loading up an envelope sealing and stamping machine. Unfortunately, I loaded it wrong and the inked stamps were put on the back, wasting maybe $100. I felt terrible and was worried about getting my boss in trouble. She rolled her eyes a little, but said she would take care of it…
There’s lots of rules and processes about the mail that companies figure out ways to deal with. It’s part of business, and it doesn’t make sense for them to expect to be treated the same as residential service.
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
@NotMax:
Wow. The high today here is 96. I would be dead without refrigeration!
Bex
Frannie the dog and Postman Dan, https://youtube.com/shorts/ybE7ma6U.m
eclare
@Bex:
I love them!
sdhays
@Kayla Rudbek: I sent a letter to my buddy in Boston back in March and it only arrived last week.
Chris Johnson
A stray thought: I would love for some of these people, the ones making narratives to try and disrupt everything, the ones trying to pressure Joe to surrender and screw up the team and our campaign to keep that team in office, to be asked this question:
“Do you think people trust Donald Trump less than they did the first time he lost to Joe Biden?”
note that this includes Jan 6 and so much more, but it’s a simple question.
Do you think people trust Donald Trump less, now, than they did the first time he lost to Joe Biden?
(I think you’d get some of the wildest, most panicky spin ever. I think bricks would be shat. I’d really like to see that question asked…)
eclare
@sdhays:
Yeah, I do not get great service. I never got an invite to a relative’s bridal shower, and I never got an invite to a friend’s wedding.
Awkward to ask my aunt, um, am I invited to this shower? And then I got an angry text from my friend, so are you coming to my wedding?
And I routinely get mail for the same number but different street. So I’m glad y’all have good postmans, I do not.
Eta>I did get the invite to a friend’s wedding. In July. It was postmarked in April.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Maybe Sammy is right and mail delivery is only a side gig. Did you ever think of that?
Kay
@BRyan:
I worked for the postal service. They’ve been doing “cluster boxes” since the 1970s.
The regulations say that if they offered only rural delivery in an area – so not “city delivery” – they can continue to offer rural delivery. When they build a new development where there was only rural delivery (where the carrier drives) they will only deliver to cluster boxes.
Some people like the cluster arrangement because the boxes lock.
in fancier new developments w/larger lots what you’re getting is rural delivery – individual addresses spaced apart. “City carriers” service only cities.
lowtechcyclist
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Christ, what an asshole! Bad enough that he didn’t look when he was backing up (or that he didn’t bother to notice if his tailgate was down), but to just drive away without so much as leaving a note – fuck that guy.
I hope his insurance rates go up so much that he can’t afford the damned truck anymore.
JML
The USPS is great. Most of the problems it faces (or has faced) are the result of understaffing and idiotic policy changes driven by people who want them to fail, because they can’t stand to see government services work and do so efficiently and well. Give them reasonable staffing and competent leadership and they’ll continue to amaze.
My mom had the same postal carrier for years and knew all of the seniors on his route well, and looked out for them. He made a real difference in keeping the neighborhood connected to each other and was like an extra wellness check. Love the post office.
Rural areas should vote against the GOP just because of the USPS: if the GOP gets their way and fucks the post office out of existence or into total privitization, then a lot of rural areas ain’t getting their packages in a few days any longer and delivery charges are going to shoot up into the stratosphere…if they get delivered at all. That “last mile” delivery that the USPS does for Amazon and others is massive.
Kay
@BRyan:
If a city actually adds addresses w/in an existing footprint those addresses get city delivery – but the PO doesn’t have to expand city delivery to areas formerly served by a rural route, hence, cluster boxes
The rules change if the development also includes businesses – then they’ll add a route.
Betty
@chemiclord: I agree. DeJoy has messed up the primary function of the post office in an effort to compete with Fed Ex. It is still a valuable asset but is not serving the public as well as it should. Senator Ossoff held a hearing on it, and a few others in Congress have complained, but this needs much more attention.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
Is that the name for those green Relay boxes?
Old School
@Mike in Pasadena:
Usually, it’s live concert recordings. Trading copies of shows you have for shows you don’t.
Since they aren’t official releases, the general hope is that the artists won’t care as long as money isn’t being made on the transaction.
Ksmiami
So after careful thought (and a sleepless night) as to how the Dems should handle the past few days events, I realize the answer is this: Violence, hatred and chaos is the Republican brand. America, do we really need more of it? Because that is what a second Trump term means.
RevRick
@CaseyL: In Daniel Walker Howe’s tome, What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, he argues that the Post Office was an essential part of the revolution in transportation and communications that transformed national politics, emergent religions, and mass reform movements. The Post Office was how newspapers got delivered and news spread, since they were sent for free through the mail.
Until the Civil War, the Post Office was by far the largest part of the US government. It was instrumental in creating the first mass protest movement, the petition campaign against Indian Removal under President Jackson, a campaign, by the way, that fostered the mass involvement of women in politics.
It’s hard for us to wrap our heads around how arduous the exchange of information was in 1815, it taking weeks to reach such remote locations as Chicago. It was as arduous as the movement of goods. And it was first, the opening of the Erie Canal, followed a decade later by the arrival of the railroads, and then the creation of the telegraph, which utterly transformed American life. It enabled farmers to move from subsistence agriculture to one based in commodities. It birthed the first mass markets.
It took Henry Clay, whose political career spanned these decades, weeks to get to DC from his home in Kentucky when he was first elected. When he died, news spread throughout the nation in minutes, courtesy of telegraph lines, which Clay was instrumental in enabling in the Whig Congress of 1842. (The book’s title comes from the four word message Morse sent from DC to his assistant in Baltimore.)
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
No. The relay boxes are part of city delivery. Cluster boxes look like this.
Some of them have parcel lockers which people love. The postal service started requiring them when trailer parks went up on rural routes – so 1970’s – because they would have had to add city routes between and among already existing rural routes – very expensive. Rural routes and city routes are two completely different logistical approaches – “city” is based on density.
So if you have a single family house in the city and split it into units, you’ll still get individual (city) delivery because that was the existing scheme, but only at the single point that existed prior.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
That’s crazy. Home refrigeration was a BFD if there ever was one.
Kay
DeJoy is kind of a mixed bag. Deocrats warmed up to him because he’s (genuinely) bipartisan – does actually seem to be a manager, not an ideologue and also because he supported and lobbied for Biden’s legislation packages (which included funding to upgrade the postal service). OTOH, what he terms “growing pains” HAVE slowed delivery times and accuracy. The basic goal of mail delivery is to only run full trucks, that’s what he’s trying to do but that’s incredibly difficult – it’s all UPS and Fed Ex and USPS managers do – they seek to run full trucks. A quarter of the Senate now want him gone – both Republicans and Democrats – so I don’t think he’s going to see the fruition of his ten year plan, but it might have worked. He’s not a clown or an incompetent.
Kay
It’s just so funny because when I was at the Postal Service we were told almost daily that we were dying because of the decline of first class letter mail. But then after I left first class parcel delivery exploded with the rise of shopping online, so never count the USPS out. Those existing routes and infrastructure and know how are valuable. They can evolve.
Another Scott
@Kay: I’ve never seen an explanation of how taking local mail and shipping it to some giant sorting center half-way across the country then sending it back to the locality for delivery is supposed to be more “efficient”. Yeah, we all know the story of FedEx sending every package to their Memphis hub for sorting before sending it to wherever it’s going. But that was a model developed 50+ years ago. And a model that works for a $25 package doesn’t necessarily work for a $0.75 letter, does it?? And we have enough $25 package delivery services – that’s not the USPS’s essential job. Its job is to deliver goods and information to Americans everywhere and anywhere at scale for a uniform price.
We have cheap computing everywhere now, so it should be possible to smartly direct mail to a “local” bin rather than dumping everything into “to giant sorting center” bin.
Especially given the cost of fuel and CO2 issues, moving stuff farther than it needs to go makes no sense.
Some things need people. Efficiently, reliably, and quickly delivering the mail is one of them. That’s not some sort of “failure” of the USPS – it’s the reality of what’s required for its essential job.
I really think that DeJoy’s “reforms” don’t make any sense, myself. It’s disappointing to me that he is still in the job. But, as I said, I haven’t seen any sensible explanation of what he’s trying to do (and I have looked occasionally).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Ohio Mom: Yes! The 4th Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things …”
which is why I feel any decision giving some access to one’s emails, texts, voice mail messages, cloud, security camera footage, etc needs more robust support as “one’s” papers. I don’t see it as a coincidence that just when people starting relying on digital correspondence, the Federal government under Bush the Lesser and the GOP in general did not pick up the ball because they felt access to those records via the carrier allowed them to “keep us safe” from terrorists.
citizen dave
@Mike in Pasadena: Sorry–could have explained this. Music trading in this context means trading of live, non-commerical releases, etc. Back in the 1990s the way it was done was the recorder would post they had the concert, and it would get distributed out via “branches” and “leaves”, etc. Eventually one would have enough of these to have one’s own list, which you could then do bilateral trades with others. All of this is cd-burning, so no loss of generation. (I never did tape trading).
https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2003-10-03/180099/
Aside from just a concert, people made great compilations, multi-disc, etc. I remember the 4 disc Bob Dylan one that had all the Basement Tapes songs–before he did the official release.
Since internet speeds getting faster, it all went online. I’ve been doing it at dimeadozen.org, which I think back in the day had a user limit–10,000/100,000? Anyway, I see there are 44,000 people on there now
Per old school’s comments, on the site I reference, I don’t think they actually check with artists, but if an artist makes it known they don’t want their non-commercial stuff shared, this site respects that and does not allow.
BRyan
@Kay: thanks for the info! I don’t know if that’s the case with the particular developments that I’m thinking of – one was built on the grounds of what had formerly been an elementary school, and one is being built on the grounds of what was formerly a golf course, so I don’t know if the different-rules-governing thing applies, but it seems possible. I wouldn’t think most people would trade the convenience of home delivery for a little cluster lockbox, but it sounds like there’s no choice. Oh, I am so spoiled with home delivery. Thanks.
wjca
Growing up in the country, our mail delivery was contracted out. What was then called a “Star Route.” The roads where we were had names, but nothing like a house number. And even the road names weren’t part of our mailing address. Just Name, “Star Route”, City, State. (No ZIP Codes back then either.) The (contract) mailman had to know the names and approximate locations of every family on his route in order to sort the mail before heading out.
Mail was only once per day, but in the larger cities (San Francisco, Oakland) they still got twice a day. Somehow, we managed not to see this a discrimination against us.
SomeRandomGuy
@Kay: The first thing I heard about Dejoy was, he was mucking up mail delivery during a time when it shouldn’t have been mucked with.
I mean, I’m willing to listen that maybe he took a brickbat to the USPS to help TFG, but now is doing his job, and I really don’t care that he’s doing his job .
If there was some big expose “although it looked like he started mucking up the mails in 2020, HE WAS NOT! Those were absolutely necessary changes that had to happen RIGHT THEN,” I probably still wouldn’t trust it, but, I haven’t even seen a “I SAID people should EVACUATE — Heckuvajob Brownie” article.
So, even if you’re 100% correct, I understand people roundly roasting Dejoy. As far as I know, he’s just plain corrupt, but has nothing to be corrupt about right now. If he’s not corrupt at all, he came into office with some awfully corrupt stories coinciding.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Now I could be 10000% wrong but I believe that he is actually trying to make it work more efficiently. Now it’s the postal service so high efficient may actually be impossible. I’d bet that most of us do not get mail every day. I’d also bet that while any day’s volume may not be all that different, at the end of the line it will vary a lot. And while we will have a large mail service the individual volume may go down because a lot of postal items may change to online. Many of my bills for example are now handled online.