Postal Going

So when was the last time someone turned you and said, "You know, my mail delivery has been really dependable lately!" or "We can sure count on the U.S. Postal Service!"? Used to be these comments were unnecessary; reliable mail service was one of the great givens of quotidian life. If there was ever a misdelivery it was attributed to a rare and forgiveable human error, or it was the recipient who somehow misplaced the errant bill or dropped it accidentally through the crevice between the elevator and the landing. But what large massive system ever was celebrated by a motto declaring that no accident or meteorological impediment would ever deter the carrier from his/her appointed rounds?

Well, all that has gone pretty much to shit. The quality of service of the postal system seems to be deteriorating at an accelerating rate, as though the workers know they are in a lame duck institution and are there simply for the collection of an inflated pension and the job security only a powerful union can provide. In the past year I've experienced several incidents of important mail mysteriously disappearing through the system: a credit card payment vanishing into the ether; the disappearance of some periodicals, a tax software program, and more egregiously, a large check from a brokerage house. I assume that some of these items appeared in other people's boxes, just as I continue to receive, at the rate of one item a day, something that belongs to someone else.

My experience with magazines has been particularly galling. I stopped receiving "Newsweek," to which I'd been subscribing for nearly two decades, last August. I learned after investigation that our mail carrier, who could not find my Unit number on my magazine mailing label, didn't bother to check my name listed in the mail room, and instead returned the journal as "undeliverable." In order to do this the carrier had to fill out a form, and submit it. Now, even if the person were lazy, doesn't filling out the form require a lot more energy than checking my name on a chart in the mail room? When I went to the station to complain, I was asked for all sorts of identification so that they could send a retraction to "Newsweek" admitting that I indeed did exist. Of course I had to make calls to the magazine to update my address, etc. This is mildly annoying, but after registering a complaint with the post office, and receiving assurances that they would look into the poor service, the exact same thing happened with my "New Yorker" magazine, and it disappeared from my box. When I called to complain a second time, to the number given me specifically for that purpose, I reached a Spanish-speaking person who refused to converse in English. When I said I didn't speak Spanish, he hung up on me. Thanks, guy--Now I get to reevaluate my stances on immigration and bilingual education.

It wouldn't have mattered had I actually reached someone who would discuss the problem in our native tongue; I can trust no assurances of improved service, and we have no recourse for complaint. Nobody can sue the Post Office, and it's essentially a monopoly, at least in the handling of tangible correspondence. In the case of my condo building, we used to have an excellent, prompt deliverer, who sadly went into a coma after a botched operation. That was five years ago, however, union regulations have prevented the local Office from replacing him in our route with a permanent carrier. Hey, I liked the guy too, but come on! So we get an endless string of substitutes too incompetent to look up at the names on a resident listing board. And everybody loses.

A lot of personal griping here, and I'm sure many others have worse experiences, but the bottom line is that the deterioration of the postal delivery service as the Internet continues to absorb its functions seems almost conspiratorial. I have been a stubborn hold-out against on-line bill-paying, as I fear the potential for virus infections, mischievous hacking and identity theft increases every day. Yet I have reached the point when I am no longer confident that a plainly stamped and mailed item will reach its destination. I don't know if that trust will ever be reestablished. The Postal System is turning into a dinosaur before our eyes, and I can see, within a decade or two, its complete dissolution. But its army of workers don't give a damn; they'll just be making more once they've been retired. And I'll be reading "The New Yorker" from New Yorker.com, thank you.