On Wednesday, the U.S. Postmaster General went up to Congress to tell them about his financial crisis. Turns out, we’ve all quit writing letters and notes to our family, friends (and enemies, too, to include all the things we’re no longer sending via first class mail). We’ve stopped getting and paying bills via the post office, shifting over to on-line notices for billing and electronic transfers for paying. And many businesses and individuals have given up on USPO parcel post and leaked over to UPS and the other package carriers, and if parcel shipping is overall reduced because of less consuming, then even what little share the USPO has will be reduced.
And what that all means is that the USPO is in bigger trouble than usual. The kind of trouble that won’t be cured by going to 43 cents from 42 cents. (I remember when the typewriter keyboard used to have a ‘cents’ symbol up there on the number row, maybe a capital 6; why did it go and what replaced it? Here's the answer to that question; thanks, Miep!) What the Postmaster has in mind is closing the post office one more day per week. When we went from 7 days of open post offices to 6 days, it was because the religious community didn’t want to compete with the post office. Now, it is, like everything, about insufficient moneys. And, the Postmaster whispered, they were thinking about closing some of those little, tiny rural non-productive post offices.
Well, you’d think that our own post office in Point Roberts would be #1 on that list. And then you’d think again about all those long lines you’ve stood in behind the commercial mailers. And then you’d come to a different conclusion. It’s possible that Point Roberts’ post office is one of the big money generators in the country on a per capita basis, just as Point Roberts’ gas stations are probably the highest producers of gas taxes in the country, on a resident per capita basis. Down in D.C., they probably look at the Point Roberts post office mail and package figures and wonder in amazement what all 1300 of us residents are doing, other than writing letters and sending packages, day and night. Up here, we know different, but I’d think it looks good for keeping our post office on the grounds of its excellent money generating history.
And if so, next time you are standing in line behind a bulk mailer, thank him/her. And if you’re in line in front of a bulk mailer, maybe you should offer to trade places?
1 comment:
I mailed a package to someone in Point Roberts yesterday, from Point Roberts, and they chose to send it down to Everett, so that it could be counted as mail traffic for Point Roberts, so it could be that our small local Post Office is counted by how much mail it receives as well as how much it send out. I protested the waste of gasoline and energy and time, using old wasteful examples of my husband's years in the Navy, where food was thrown off of ships so that the cook's budgets would not get cut, but was told that it didn't really matter, as the truck make the trip anyway, so no extra gas is really used for any one package. But it all seemed so dumb to me anyway. I am a big user of the Post Office, as I still write letters and mail packages via USPS, but I guess I need to not complain about how far away they send my local mail so that it can have an Everett, WA postmark instead of a Point Roberts one.
Rose
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