Rain, Snow, Gloom of Night Ignored: The Silence of the Postal Service
I complained to the local postmaster that we weren’t getting daily mail. I knew this because the post office informs me electronically about what mail I have that day, but sometimes nothing at all would not show up in the mailbox. We’re at the end of the route, and I think the driver sometimes stopped if it was getting late or he or she was behind schedule. We’re long beyond the days of “neither rain nor snow….”
The postmaster didn’t respond to three hard copy letters. (Maybe they were never delivered.)
So I wrote to his boss, the postmaster in Providence. No response from him, but two weeks later I received a cell phone voice mail from the first guy with a number to call. The number was an automated message that asked me to hold on. After six minutes, it disconnected me. I called again, and in six minutes it did the same thing. The postmaster never bothered to follow up with me again.
This is the example that is set by postal management—it would be a great job is customers just didn’t get in the way and demand service. When we arrived here many years ago, box mail was available at 8 am. Now, after 30 years of progress and automation, it’s often not available until after 11 am.
I don’t mind errors, but lowering standards instead of trying to improve gets you fired in private business, and rudeness is a deliberate decision of inferior minds.
I know I probably won’t get any mail at all now, but my Fedex and UPS guys are efficient and very supportive. Oh, year, and there’s this thing called email. There is no email address for my local postmaster, of course.
