Due to my days at the USPS, I would have guessed that the biggest job a federal agency ever faced was unloading trailer full of mail sacks packed with catalogs. When those came in during the middle of summer, I felt I fully deserved those nice checks President Reagan sent me every two weeks.
Those catalogs now come palletized, and are never hand unloaded. It’s interesting to see the Postal Service struggle to process the mail with less and less people - mostly old people, and little new equipment. I’ll be 50 this year, and am the third youngest in my department. Most of the clerks and mail handlers in my facility are 55+, working 12 hours/day 6 days a week to keep up. Hopefully our new Postmaster will do more to stem the losses and turn this ship around. He has a monumental task ahead, and I wouldn’t bet on success.