Comments on: Postal Service Ends Saturday Mail

by: j t bolt

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:34:13 +0000

I need to write more letters to people

by: comatus

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:00:59 +0000

dusty, stop around the bar after work. There’s some stories I want to tell you.

by: dustydog

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:23:30 +0000

First, it’s odd to link to the Fox News report rather than the official announcement. http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2013/pr13_019.htm

Second, there is nothing about laying off workers, or not hiring replacements. A private company cutting hours would be getting by with fewer employees; the default assumption for a government job is those people will switch to telecommuting on Saturdays, or promotions to management.

Third, choosing Saturday as the day to cut makes no sense. There are fewer cars on the roads Saturdays. Cutting Monday instead of Saturday would improve urban traffic.

Fourth - growing up, our home had a mailbox by the road - the postal worker delivered mail without getting out of the vehicle. They switched it so that mail was only delivered to one side of the road (i.e. moving half the mail boxes onto the neighbor’s property). After college, when I rented, mail was delivered to one row of little metal boxes for twenty houses - we walked over and unlocked our little box to get our mail. Where I live now, the mailboxes must be attached to the home (or the door must have a mail slot), and the postal workers walk back and forth to their truck. The simple expedient of changing the single-family houses in my city to mailboxes by the road would half the number of postal workers needed to deliver residential mail here.

by: comatus

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:08:38 +0000

Timely to point out that stamps used to be 3 cents (2 cents for a demographic I got to hear from, but they’re all gone now), the RPO trains went coast-to-coast in two days, and there used to be two deliveries a day. And What About Those Air Mail Stamps? ??

And also, legions “who pay your wages” and have spent 20 years (30 if hip) decrying the obsolete postal business model will suddenly discover they can’t do business without Saturday delivery. It’s a lot like the free PO box, and the “postmistress” making coffee for the whole town every morning. It’s shocking waste until you cut it; then it’s an assault on Our Way of Life. The Hill hearings will be a hoot.

Home delivery originated because the wailing of Civil War widows in the lobby was considered unseemly. Now there’s a business model.

by: Granny Grunch

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:49:38 +0000

Oh noooooo,the humanity…..we are doomed….its the end of life as we know it……

by: Mike

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:24:41 +0000

I quit an assembly line job at Chrysler to go back to college. At the time it looked like Chrysler would close, but that plant is still making cars. I ended up with an MBA and have been self employed most of the time since, but if I had stayed at that job I would have made way more over the course of my career, had a good pension and 401k and would be waiting for an early retirement offer about now.