Posted on 05/28/2011 6:47:53 PM PDT by 4buttons
He is struck by how many USPS executives started out as letter carriers or clerks. He finds them so consumed with delivering mail that they have been slow to grasp how swiftly the service's financial condition is deteriorating. "We said, 'What's your 10-year plan?' " Herr recalls. "They didn't have one."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
UPS nor FedEx will deliver a post card or standard #10 envelope.
shred the junk mail and use it as mulch in the bed of the hedges or fill in low spots in the yard, once the grass gets cut (mulch-blade) over it, it disappears.
It can’t be. The US constitution states that one of the functions of the US government is to provide a mail service.
Without a constitutional amendment, the USPS *HAS* to stay operating and under federal control.
Good. Defund all collectives.
Yeah I’ve had run ins with one of the address specialists. I guess I’m fortunate to not losing any packages. I just get other peoples mail all the time.
Their problem isn’t the number of days they deliver. its the number of people they have doing nothing and pulling full ride pensions.
They make money off junk mail, so its in their best interest to deliver more of it.
I can say this though... the day the USPS charges me to receive mail is the day I stop bothering to check it, forever. I will not pay to receive junk.
Here are three recent stories that sum up the level of stupidity with which the USPS is run.
(1)
Half century of service earns South Sound postal worker a joyous goodbye
Retirement party: After 50 years, postal worker gets special send-off
ROLF BOONE; Staff writer | • Published April 29, 2011
TUMWATER - George Witherow will work one more four-hour shift today for the U.S. Postal Service and then, 50 years after he went to work for the federal government, he’ll finally call it quits.
Postal Worker George Witherow Retires After 50 Years
On Thursday, his co-workers, plus about 12 family members, threw a retirement party for him at the mail processing and distribution facility in Tumwater.
More than 50 people crowded into the facility’s break room to say goodbye to Witherow, who is 85. He was seated at the front of the room, balloons affixed to his chair and a stack of presents next to him. Co-workers, family members and friends shared their memories of Witherow for about an hour, then lined up to shake his hand or give him a farewell hug. His great-grandchildren helped him open gifts.
“I’d like to think we can always be friends,” Witherow said to his retirement party audience.
Witherow’s first job for the postal service was “facing letters,” manually adjusting letters by hand so that they could be processed through a machine. His final job was working as a review clerk, he said. Witherow recalled that when he started, a stamp cost three or four cents and there were no ZIP codes. He worked an early shift, which started at 4:30 a.m. and ended at 1 p.m., and then he would head to his East Olympia home, where he worked in his garden and tended to his cows, pigs and chickens until sundown.
Duke Matthews, who has worked for the postal service for 13 years, called Witherow a strong person, someone who enjoyed his job and took it all in stride. “He liked what he did,” Matthews said, adding that the work was sometimes thankless and hard.
“I enjoyed talking to him,” Matthews said.
Taped on the walls of the break room for Witherow’s retirement party were a number of his favorite expressions, including “Too soon we get old, too late we get smart,” and “Top o’ the morning to you and a jolly old balance of the day.” The second expression was one of Joe Taylor’s favorites.
Taylor, too, works for the postal service and recalled the first time he met Witherow, who greeted him with the expression. Taylor said it sounded weird the first time, but then it became a regular exchange for them, something they said to each other every morning.
“My only regret is that I didn’t know George long enough,” Taylor said.
Witherow was born and raised in Pennsylvania and moved to the Olympia area to join his brother in the late 1950s, he said. By then, Witherow was in his early 30s and was looking for steady work after a period in which his past employers, both General Motors and General Electric, had laid him off. “I needed a job,” he said about his early days in Olympia.
After his pastor spotted an opening for him at the post office, Witherow got the job. He started in 1961, three days before his 35th birthday. His first few years were spent working at the federal building downtown, followed by a long stint at the main Olympia post office and then the distribution center in Tumwater.
On his list of things to do after retirement: taking a trip to Pennsylvania with his grandson.
(2)
Oldest Postal Worker retires at 95 years old
July 2nd, 2010 8:34 pm CT Stanley Cravens St. Louis Postal Service
Postal worker retires at the age of 95.Credits: USPS LinkIt’s not known whether Chester Reed planned all along on working for the Postal Service until he was 95 years old, or if it just crept up on him, but he finally decided he was ready for retirement. Working to the age of 95 earned Reed the well-deserved honor of being the oldest employee of the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Reed’s last day on the job was Wednesday, June 30, ending a career that spanned 62 years, 10 months, and 12 days of combined military service and postal employment. He served in the Air Force for 25 years, retiring as a sergeant. Chester then worked for the Postal Service for 37 years, ending his career as a mail handler operating a fork lift at the San Bernardino, CA mail processing facility. Amazingly, Reed didn’t use any sick days during his Postal Service employment, retiring with nearly two years of accumulated sick leave that will be credited to his retirement.
To what does Chester credit for his good health and ability to work so long? A good working environment for one thing, but something else he will always mention are the onion sandwiches he eats everyday. Apparently, an onion sandwich a day kept the doctor away!
Chester Reed may be officially retired, but it won’t be a sitting-around-taking-it-easy kind of retirement. Reed loves to travel, and plans on taking a few trips with his 57 year old son. Russia, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland are the countries he’d most like to see next. On one of his previous trips with his son, Reed went to Rio de Janeiro where he went hang gliding,..., at the age of 93! With that kind of energy and sense of adventure, Chester still has an exciting life ahead of him.
Neither rain, sleet, snow, or age was able to keep this postal worker from the completion of his appointed rounds. Congratulations, Chester Reed, on an amazing career!
(3)
85-year-old Chapel Hill letter carrier in Sunday’s Parade magazine
Rudy Tempesta, 85, the longest-serving mailman in the nation, is featured in Sunday’s Parade magazine.
For 65 years—first in New York City, and since 1959 in Chapel Hill — Rudy has been delivering good news and bad, checks and bills, letters and magazines, catalogs and packages, the magazine reports. For the past 20 years, his route has been a seven-mile stretch in the central part of Chapel Hill: North Estes Drive and the pretty residential streets—Somerset, Granville, Cumberland, Halifax—that curl off and around it.
At 85, he has no plans to retire soon, he tells Parade.
“I’ve still got children in college,” he says. “And I love to work. It’s better than sitting home all day watching television and getting fat.”
They’ll deliver. At what cost?
I tried to look up online. USPS took me to 3 or 4 screens before showing that an ounce letters to Andorra, where my uncle the Prince resides would set me back $0.98.
The Fedex site (I didn’t try UPS) took me to a dozen screens before showing me (and I’m still not sure that is correct) that the same letter could cost me $28.85 or more to have delivered.
Do I think that the $0.98 charge is being subsidized by the taxpayers? If it is, then there is something wrong, becauese this is an international rate agreed upon by a multitude of countries. If it isn’t subsidized by the Swiss when they send snail mail to me, it shouldn’t be subsidized by us here.
Well I for one hope the USPS does not go belly up.
I will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER do online banking of any sort.
I pay my bills religiously on the 15th and 30th and my mail lady is subcontracted by the Post Office and not an employee, and does a good job.
Both almost went under in the Great Obama Recession and were asking for bailouts.
That was because their parcel volume collapsed.
USPS had a similar problem ~ mail volume dropped, the Postal Rate Commission would not allow them a rate adjustment, and Congress refused to allow them to discontinue operations that are excessively costly.
Hmm ~
BTW. Neither UPS nor FedEx deliver to the entire USA. They regularly mail their out of range stuff with USPS.
What kind of church do you go to that has a Bible study where someone can brag about “gaming the system” and they aren’t corrected on their attitude?
In the last several months they lost 4 packages I had coming. all of them were replaced by the sellers but I no longer count on getting things on time unless UPS or Fedex handles them.
If you believe you've had 6 parcels stolen in a couple of years you OWE it to everyone to report that to the Postal Inspection Service.
Failure to do so makes you complicit in the crimes.
I recently had a package sent by USPS delivered by UPS. Evidently, USPS ousources some of its services.
Much more junk mail than letters these days. What's especially annoying is those newspaper flyers that are neither contained in envelopes nor bound like magazines.
They were all reported. Nothing happened. The thefts continue.
I have also heard from a certain well placed person that the main post office in Greenville SC is a major point for stuff (gift cards esp) disappearing only to reappear at delivery with no contents. Complaints that were filed apprently were quashed or flat out ignored. Anything of value goes UPS or Fedex.
I keep hearing this, volume down, parcel volume collapsing, etc. It isn't happening in my P.O. The last mail count all our routes went up in size.
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