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The Nation's Pulse
Where’s My Mail?
“The check is in the mail” isn’t what it used to be.
I don’t want to sound like Lansberry, the legendary Pittsburgher who walked around town for decades with a protest sign saying that the government was withholding his mail, but I’m missing about 300 pieces of mail.
My problem started in June when I went to my local post office and filled out a mail forwarding card, as I do every year in June, stating that our mail should be re-routed temporarily to our house in Sea Isle, New Jersey, for five weeks.
We probably get an average of 10 pieces of mail a day, not counting the junk mail, so in five weeks that’s about 300 pieces of mail.
It worked every year, except this year. Each week, we’d get no mail for four or five days and then one piece would arrive.
I checked Sea Isle’s post office and they had no idea of why so little mail was arriving.
I figured maybe our mail was wrongly being held in Pittsburgh and we’d get a nice big pile of mail on the porch after we got home.
Instead, there was nothing in Pittsburgh.
So what’d they do with our mail? Steal it? Burn it? Forward it to the FBI? Or was it sitting in a box somewhere in the back of the post office, waiting to be discovered some day like that love letter that was delivered in July this year after being lost in the Pittsburgh mail system for 53 years?
“WHY CAN’T LANSBERRY GET MAIL?” said Bob Lansberry’s protest sign. I said the same thing, except inserting my own name, to the friendly clerk working behind the counter at my local post office.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Did you have another forwarding card in the system in the past 18 months?”
“Yes, every year at the beginning of June,” I replied. “I fill out the card here.”
“That’s probably it,” she said. “The system hasn’t been working well if you had another forwarding request in the system in the past 18 months.”
The system hasn’t been working? And no one fixes it? And no one told us?
“So where’s our mail now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Kitty | 8.17.11 @ 6:30AM
Is Newman your mailman?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpWi4e2LD74
Appleby| 8.17.11 @ 6:58AM
We have so much misdirected mail in our building that we have a box in the lobby labeled *returned mail*. Sometimes the only thing that matches is my apartment number -- the actual address may be somewhere downtown.
We had a postal strike for most of June, and the result was mainly that many people discovered they could do quite well without Canada Post. I had a friend from the States mail things to my American family for me, and explained to the bill collectors that I would pay as soon as the bills came in. Except for Canadian Tire, who had a robot call me at 6:30 every single night to hound me for $21 (which I paid at the bank to get them off my back), that suited them all.
Just like the transit strikes, all these exercises accomplish is to convince people they dont need the service anyway.
shipley130| 8.18.11 @ 1:51AM
Do the actual postal workers ever lose their own mail?
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 8.17.11 @ 7:12AM
Behind the comments in your article is another truth.
The Post Office long ago became the receptacle for those who couldn't find jobs elsewhere because it required low skill levels.
The test to become a Post Office letter carrier was simple. You match up addresses and a few other simple tasks and viola! You're driving a mail truck or walking a route.
You can't go into most city post offices without being faced by long lines and belligerent employees. Most of the urban areas are staffed by minorities and women which may explain the entitlement attitudes at the counter.
However, here's why the Post Office is failing and it's well known:
Rick Geddes argued in 2000:[26]
First, basic economics implies that rural customers are unlikely to be without service under competition; they would simply have to pay the true cost of delivery to them, which may or may not be lower than under monopoly.
Second, basic notions of fairness imply that the cross-subsidy should be eliminated. To the extent that people make choices about where they live, they should assume the costs of that decision.
Third, there is no reason why the government monopoly is necessary to ensure service to sparsely populated areas. The government could easily award competitive contracts to private firms for that service.
Fourth, early concerns that rural residents of the United States would somehow become isolated without federally subsidized mail delivery today are simply unfounded. ... Once both sender and receiver have access to a computer, the marginal cost of sending an electronic message is close to zero.
Wordmonger| 8.17.11 @ 8:35AM
Can the postal worker play his viola whilst driving his truck or walking his route,BHO?
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 8.17.11 @ 9:05AM
Maybe. Think Voila!
Bill| 8.17.11 @ 1:19PM
I think they're prohibited from cleaning their AKs on USPS time, though.
shipley130| 8.18.11 @ 1:49AM
That's just wrong, Bill. hehe.
Bob K.| 8.17.11 @ 9:29AM
Back in the 50's and 60's in rural areas here in PA the delivery of the mail was put out for bid and the mail man was a private businessman who worked out of his own car after picking up and sorting the mail in the local post office. Often you would see him or her come by with a small kid who was being baby sat.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 8.17.11 @ 10:24AM
Now we have Post Office workers who are being baby sat by government regulations.
Bob K.| 8.17.11 @ 10:33AM
Haw! Good one!
Occam's Tool| 8.17.11 @ 11:48AM
I want them running my health care!
Michael Tomlinson| 8.17.11 @ 1:23PM
Phase out the current postal system and privatize mail delivery. We'll get our mail faster without the nuisance of garbage from AARP, etc..
Moe Blotz| 8.17.11 @ 8:41AM
When I moved two miles up the road from a suburban address to a rural address, my forwarding was similarly botched. Within two years of my move, the local post office resumed delivering mail affixed with my old address to that address.
JimH| 8.17.11 @ 9:25AM
Have you ever met a gruntled postal worker?
Mike Hawk| 8.17.11 @ 10:19AM
Yes, they are always bitching about "management" and working conditions. Just like the unionized clods they have become.
Drunken Sailor| 8.17.11 @ 12:27PM
Ahh the old "How can you be disgruntled if you have never been gruntled" theory! Nice.
Petronius| 8.17.11 @ 9:26AM
After 36 years carrying mail and having to deal with CFU over this issue vis-a-vis "Snowbirds" wintering south of here, I can well sympathize. The Computerized Forwarding Unit did to the same to my patrons. I finally went back to doing what worked when I was a sub and just marked up their 1st class by hand. This worked if I could obliterate the bar codes which is what our machines really read. That problem required pasting a blank label over them because the ink is magnetic like your checks. When those pieces got returned a 2nd time, I would go to my boss for a Penalty envelope, write the forwarding address on the face and send it on. Sometimes I would add a little apology note to the pile using a form 13; (buck slip), explaining that the words "Forwarding Unit" in the above acronym had another designation which the conventions of this comment board prohibits the use of.
The reason the public must endure these boondogles is good old fashioned graft on the part of the U.S.P.S. Board of Governors. When they hire a consulting engineer to design systems like CFU, it is with the objective of eliminating craft employees and banking bonuses for themselves: (we politely don't use the term kick back.) When this operation began, CFU sent the yellow labels to us and we placed them across the address on the face of the envelope. No problem. When operations took that task away from the carriers so they could add street time to our routes, the folks who decamped to Florida after Christmas experienced the subject results of this article. Your regular Letter Carrier, (if you have one), is holding the remains of what used to be the best Postal Service on earth together. We know you. We know where you live and vacation. Talk to us, not the managers who's mission is only to meet delivery target numbers dictated by bean counters at L'Anfant Plaza. Computers can't know anything. And when their clerks who enter your forwarding orders go on vacation, removal cards pile up on the desk.
One last thing. There are stories about cutting delivery again for the 99th time. That means reconfiguring every route and delivery unit in the country. And if you believe the same people who will not fix your problem over your seasonal movements can accomplish that inside 5 years, you're smoking a contraband substance. Now try to enjoy what's left of your vacation. And know that, so long as over half the population writes checks to pay bills, there will be a Post Office. That is all.
fmm| 8.17.11 @ 10:28AM
perfect statement on the state of the times
Pecos Pete| 8.17.11 @ 10:39AM
I recently found out that future federal government bank checks will NOT be mailed but will be digitally transferred to your bank account.
Another loss of revenue for the USPS.
Can you imagine the number of computer hackers, with stars in their eyes, anticipating the gathering of bank account information by the federal government. Hacker Nirvana!
PS: I also understand that ObamaCare stipulates that the federal government must have your bank account number. Thus, your bank account number will be in the Federal Check System and in the HHS system.
PPS: Anyone who believes the federal government can maintain the secrecy of your bank account number is a lunatic.
TrueBlue| 8.17.11 @ 3:12PM
The federal government has been using direct deposit for 99% of their payments to employees for quite awhile actually. That said, their system is no less secure than any other banking system from an electronic standpoint, it's the physical security of the forms you have to fill out that presents problems.
Have to love how ObamaCare requires everyone to have their bank account registered so the federal government can pull money out whenever they want.
Sam Vaughn| 8.17.11 @ 12:38PM
Such is the future of healthcare.
TruthSpeaker| 8.17.11 @ 1:34PM
I am impressed that the author can afford a summer home at the beach.
TrueBlue| 8.17.11 @ 3:13PM
Nothing wrong with success.
TrueBlue| 8.17.11 @ 3:13PM
Well, success that doesn't lend to the destruction of the country anyway.
jshizzle| 8.17.11 @ 4:15PM
CFU= Constantly F'd Up
Solo| 8.17.11 @ 6:36PM
I use a private mailbox service. My junk mail and my utility bills still arrive at my street-side mailbox (It's mandatory says my local mail Kommisar) but, if I travel for extended periods, I can get my mail forwarded by the private mail service for a nominal fee.
It's much more reliable.
sara| 8.17.11 @ 11:19PM
Just like the transit strikes, all these exercises accomplish is to convince people they dont need the service anyway.
http://www.summer-products.com
http://www.ainibag.com
sara| 8.17.11 @ 11:21PM
Often you would see him or her come by with a small kid who was being baby sat.
http://www.jerseys-hats-store.com
http://www.honey-gifts.com
shipley130| 8.18.11 @ 1:45AM
I have warned people. I have tried to tell them that they don't want the government meddling in their lives more than they already do. But as usual, I get the glaze over. I do have one little praise for a government system. The GI Bill. So far, crossed fingers and all, there has been no glitches in my college payments.