We live in a condo that has a mailroom.  In that mailroom there is a counter that is situated beneath the mailboxes.
 
And in that counter is a cutout, which allows you to throw out unwanted pieces into a trashcan for recycling.
 
Thank heavens!  Because I spend more time throwing out catalogs and other solicitations that I don’t want, don’t need and haven’t asked for.
 
My daily time spent “chucking” reaches the max during the holidays, thanks to a raft of catalogs that bloom with the poinsettias.
 
Even so, we are told, each and every year, that the U.S. Postal Service is losing the GDP equivalent of a small country—$7 BILLION this year alone!
 
So...how is the USPS proposing to stem this tide of red ink?
 
It has announced a $3 BILLION plan to rid itself of one-day service for first-class mail, eliminate at least 100,000 jobs, possibly stop Saturday deliveries and eventually closing nearly 3,500 branches leaving customers in the lurch and closing processing centers.
 
Let me see if I correctly understand this.
 
Post Office:  To stop the defection of snail mai users you’re going to DECREASE your service!?
 
Who will be most affected by this change?
 
Hmmm.  Let me see.
 
Could it be almost EVERYBODY??
 
This proposal will slow down the cash flow of small businesses by increasing the wait for payment.
 
It could jack up the cost of mail-order prescription drugs...put a stake in the heart of newspapers and time-sensitive magazines just at a time when these industries are really hurting.
 
Even Netflix is crying foul!
 
But the richest part of all is that a $3 billion fix doesn’t close a $5 billion loss, nor does it come even close to next year’s projected loss of $14.1billion.
 
Do you use the same accountants as the U.S. Government?
 
Talk about fuzzy math!
 
I am now convinced that the nefarious strategy of the USPS is to make more money by INCREASING the delivery of more junk mail causing me to spend more time in the mailroom “chucking.”
 
How many more trees will have to give their lives to finally make you profitable?
 
BTW, for my money, the USPS has already done away with "next day" service...and I have proof.
 
A friend sent a certified letter from our town’s post office to a business no more than four miles away in the same town last week.
 
Because she sent it “return receipt requested,” she saw that it took THREE DAYS to get there!
 
(By checking on-line she saw that there were No previous attempts to deliver it.)
 
For gosh sakes, I could have walked it there for her the same day!
 
There are obviously no Harvard MBAs working at the joint, otherwise the USPS might understand that you need to increase the number of consumers of your more costly services to achieve profitability rather than “tick off” and drive away even more people who can adopt on-line bill paying, buy fax machines, send more email and otherwise aid in the USPS’ accelerating push to irrelevance.
 
A word of caution:  Last summer postal workers went on strike for a month in a labor dispute in Canada.
 
Was there mass hysteria and a call to give them whatever they were striking for?
 
On the contrary, people came to realize that they can survive and continue on just fine without daily, or as in this case, monthly mail delivery.
 
Go ahead, USPS.  Make our day.

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