Tag Archives: U.S. Post Office

USPO blues

Posted on August 17, 2009 | Comments Off on USPO blues

People I know hereabouts avoid the U.S. Post Office at all costs. Here’s why:

"It’s like you have left fast-moving Manhattan and zapped yourself into the Deep South in 1934. Picture a drowsy moment in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ A clerk who has finished with one customer takes a good long pause to settle herself, exchange pleasantries with friends, arrange her workspace and so forth before she lights up the little box and asks for the next customer. If you arrive at her window before she has turned on this light, she will curtly send you away. Don’t crowd her! You’re just the customer."

That’s a description of a post office in NYC but it’s a perfect fit for our neighborhood p.o., except we have stamp machines. Imagine that, we’re ahead of NYC. Ours, however, is scheduled to close.

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Posted in Obamalot, Rancho Roly Poly

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Postal progress, maybe

Posted on August 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Postal progress, maybe

Our neighborhood post office, Chimney Corners, is on a list of seven hundred the U.S.P.O. may close due to a budget crunch. I have to say that we would hardly miss it, except for the stamp machines.

For a long time we’ve used the UPS store nearby. Much quicker service, nicer clerks, more expensive probably but maybe not by much. We would miss our nice mailman. I suppose he would be gone, too. Course we pay most of our bills online, like half the rest of the country. Part of the P.O.’s problem, no doubt.

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Posted in Obamalot, Obituaries

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That old devil government

Posted on February 3, 2009 | Comments Off on That old devil government

Reading, recently, of the Post Office’s plan to cut deliveries to five days a week, I was reminded of what they did to us in the old neighborhood before we bought the rancho out here in the hills. They decided one day that we had the wrong address and so they changed it. But without telling us or anyone else. So no one knew to use the new address and, while we wondered at the lack of mail, we fell behind in our bills, including the utility bills.

The city utilities subsequently refused to use the new address, and a flurry of fruitless visits to the Post Office ensued. The P.O. finally relented, and changed back to the old address, making us wonder why they had been so absurd as to change it in the first place. We never found out. We suspected it had something to do with all the catalogs we received unrequested, which the delivery person (a woman) was tired of hauling.

Yet, all the while, UPS and FedEx cheerfully delivered our packages to us at the old address, never knowing what the Post Office had done and was refusing to undo. That’s private enterprise vs. government. I’m glad I’m too old to have to worry overmuch about the Dem’s coming national health care. If I should live long enough for it to fully ensnare me, with its inevitable absurd rationing and possibly fatal delays, I’ll start using the VA. At least I’ll enjoy the camaraderie of other veterans who are well-schooled in government absurdities.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly

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