"The August 2020 US Politics Thread is highly thought of, but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That's all."

The "Post Office" as a delivery service is pretty incredible - $9 to get a package from California to New York in three days, with a negligible amount of damage or loss (much less damage than FedEx, which is a complete monstrosity toward its employees).

okay, i agree with that

USPS employees are not any ruder or more entitled than any state or federal employees I run into, the majority of whom are at best courteous and helpful and at worst complacent.

IMO - USPS employees are not any ruder or more entitled than any state or federal employees I run into, the majority of whom are at best courteous and helpful and at worst complacent.

yep

xp as a former state employee and current federal employee, that is otm. have also dealt with all manner of county employees. this study has led me to conclude that a significant proportion of workers in every government (and probably non-government) agency are incompetent or rude but i'm ok with it. i would never replace any of them with a fedex.

Customer facing jobs are torture, none of them are paid enough for the misery, people aren't going to blow sunshine up your ass after they've gotten yelled at 12 times that day by a Karen, no one in that customer-facing job has enough power to effect change on the systems that are causing your misery, ie "why is my package missing?! why don't you scan it at every stop?!" or whatever.

I have never understood postal workers' reputation for hostility and/or incompetence — I've had the same PO box for well over a decade and lost/missing packages have been so rare I couldn't even give you an accurate count of how many times it's happened. Less than half a dozen. Every time I have to stand in line, yeah, service can be slow, but it's because the person in line either doesn't speak English, doesn't know how to explain what they want, is doing something wrong, or all of those, not because the clerk is incompetent. The clerks do everything they can to help. Shit, the lady who fetches my packages when I have a pickup slip knows me by name. She's great.

I've never dealt with a bad USPS employee.

maybe it's a regional thing? post office desks in the north-east became increasingly rude and inefficient about ten years ago, when the criteria for customer-facing jobs changed from suitability to seniority. branch desk duty became a sinecture for cranks.

Most customer-facing government employees in this country are treated with contempt. The good ones get promoted out of customer-facing jobs as quickly as they can.

I would not call any customer-facing government job a “sinecure” by any stretch of the word

maybe it's a regional thing? post office desks in the north-east became increasingly rude and inefficient about ten years ago, when the criteria for customer-facing jobs changed from suitability to seniority. branch desk duty became a sinecture for cranks.

I'm in a mid-sized NJ city and my PO box is at the main post office.

Perhaps I've just been incredibly lucky or have low standards but every single government-or-adjacent employee I've dealt with (aside from cops) has been fine. Building inspectors, planning departments, the workers in government buildings or offices I remodeled, DMV, etc..

Most of the USPS grousing is due more to Americans being spoiled infants who expect everything to be perfect than to any legitimate systemic issues IMVHO

"I had to wait >5 minutes for a teller at the post office or like a day longer than I expected to for that one package that one time" = "USPS is garbage and should be dismantled", basically

The mail carriers here rule. They're friendly, they work hard, they're accommodating, they're part of the community. But the people working at our two local post offices have been almost cartoonishly terrible for as long as I've lived here, so much so that I avoid going in there as much as possible. Far worse than any other government agency I ever have to deal with. I have no idea why that is the case.

regarding the USPS friends of mine that have certain dried herbs mailed to them in large quantities are happy about the recent lack in scrutiny while also being disappointed in delivery times.

love usps, they come to my house and pick up packages uncomplainingly all the fucking time, for free! and are usually really nice.

wait a second

it seems like different people, in different parts of the country, dealing with different people, are having different experiences.

nonetheless, i feel confident that my usps experience in chicago is the same as any location in the world

The systemic issues with the USPS are worker related and that they should double the workforce and make it less torture up and down the line.

reminds me of a local cashier i know at the grocery store who is awesome. it's so nice that every other cashier in the country is also awesome, or at least i figure they are based off of my local experience. hold on a sec, gotta go check on political lawn sign situation on my block to see how the rest of the country feels about biden v trump

absolutely. there are 'cost-saving' measures that don't come at the expense of employees.

please understand that this is not my hill to die on. i do not have a hankerin' to trash postal employees. i have just had a bunch of crummy and hostile encounters at my local office. so have some of my friends and family members. it has nothing to do with waiting in line for five minutes.

in general i am disposed to like postal workers. my grandpa was a delivery carrier during in WW2, because he had polio and wasn't drafted and felt guilty. he wrote limericks as he walked his route. he won the national postal workers limerick contest one year, but was disqualified the next year because his limerick was 'vulgar.' he would never tell me what it was, so i assume it was actually vulgar.

my mailman is a fucking dick who has regularly misdelivered mail for our how neighborhood for years and I wish he'd retire or get fired; but all the other mail carriers I've had in town are great, and I know someone who works for the PO is is just beloved by people on his route.

My local post office is absolutely the worst; prior to moving to this neighborhood I had no real beefs with USPS and - as my father relied on postal delivery for sales - spent hours each week waiting at USPS buildings. However, this one branch is combative (to the point of actual irregular physical altercations!), drastically understaffed and consistently antagonistic to patrons. Our delivered mail is often weeks late and is regularly dropped off (wet, torn and dirty) through a mail slot in a pile of unsorted letters for the entire building or in a pile outside the door.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/nyregion/20critic.html
https://patch.com/new-york/windsorterrace/worst-post-office-nyc-hits-another-low-resident-says
https://gothamist.com/news/kensington-post-office-the-worst-post-office-in-nyc
https://patch.com/new-york/windsorterrace/worst-post-office-finds-new-way-torment-kensington-placards

The place recently caught fire due to electrical issues:
http://brooklyn.news12.com/story/38342740/kensington-post-office-reopens-after-fire

That said, I'd rather their budget was tripled than they shut down! The place needs help!

Part of my New New Deal platform is turning the USPS into a massive jobs programs. You're going to have so many tellers at the local post office you'll never have to wait. Mail routes will be cut down to a quarter of what they are and instead of the vans, each of those four carriers gets a Smart car with a sweet sound system.

can i cling to two truths?

1) the post office is terrible and many of the employees are outright abusive and incompetent
2) the post office is necessary and good the employees deserve our support

― rb (soda), Wednesday, August 12, 2020 1:05 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is the problem with the US and its relation to government in a nutshell.

** I HAVE A PLAN TO SAVE THE POST OFFICE **

YOUNG PEOPLE: Call your grandparents and ask if they got the card you sent.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT SEND A CARD.

When they say no, you sound very sad. "Oh, that's too bad. I heard that Trump was really underfunding the post office."

— Christopher Keelty 🏳️‍🌈 (@keeltyc) August 11, 2020

wrt to regional differences, you’ll be *shocked* to find out that the GOP’s intent to destroy what’s left of the USPS in order to privatize it will do just fine down here with virtually all white people—whether old or young or poor or well-off. Every failure or inconvenience is chalked up to government & employee incompetence, and the PO is notoriously where “black ppl work” because of Civil Rights and Affirmative Action. Racist post-WW2 GOP orthodoxy is absolutely unquestioned and well into its fourth generation of cradle-to-grave propaganda.

xpost Could work!

I just asked my wife her opinion, and she thinks it may be the culture at our local post offices. So much so that people recommend going to a village or town over to other post offices for better experiences.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-attack-on-the-postal-service-is-a-threat-to-democracy-and-to-rural-america

A fact that sometimes gets lost is this: USPS must - by law - go to almost every address almost every day. And they've almost always done precisely that, for something like 200 years. Even if you don't have any stupid fucking junk mail about gutter cleaning or credit offers on a particular day, the mail carrier still needs to check to see if you have any outgoing mail.

UPS and FedEx only need to go to your address if you have a package, or if you've requested a pickup.

That is a HUGE difference in mission, and the lopsidedness of expectations is being manipulated for trumpian political gain. Fuck that noize.

In my experience it varies by post office branch. The smaller one that is more near to my house, which I've been using much more regularly during the pandemic, is almost always staffed with super friendly and helpful people who often go out of their way to suggest better/faster ways to ship things (we often ship things to my father in law).

The main branch, however, is another story entirely. While I won't say that everyone that works there is awful, almost every time I've been there has been really frustrating. I've never waited less than 30 minutes in line and the employees are constantly short or outright rude. More than once I've waited in line and walked up to the open window at my turn only to have the worker slam the window shut and grumble, "closed now, get back in line".

My mother is a retired postal worker. My imaginary Roger Milleresque country hit is called "My Momma was a Mailman."

She carried mail in Houston in the 70's and quit when she moved way out to the country. In the late 80's she returned to carrying mail. She worked the counter for a while but really hated it because of the stress of dealing with people and handling money. She preferred delivering mail and being active outside.

According to her, the Psycho Postal stereotype is a real thing and it's because the management of the PO went downhill so badly. Back in the day it was a really good job with good benefits and it has slowly eroded, creating a lot of disgruntlement. There's also a disconnect between management and the carriers that are busting their ass to get everything delivered. But that could probably be said about a lot of jobs.

She had a coworker who I helped out with a couple of personal projects because he couldn't deal with computers. I was over at his house once and he introduced me to his three guns which he had named. There was Father Frank, Sister Sarah, and I can't remember the third. Quirky fella.

My mom always carried a pearl-handled deringer in her purse.

This is a small town in East Texas, I can't say that these observations apply everywhere.

the fact that mail carriers *pick up* your mail from your private home is amazing to me as an immigrant.

(it also seems unnecessary and insanely expensive in like 90% of the populated united states, and actually harmful in cities with large homeless populations and few mailboxes, e.g. LA. but i like getting my mail picked up from my house like i'm the queen.)

my local carriers DO NOT pick up from the home unless you sit and wait for them. I've had packages sit down by the door for a week.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris were preparing for their first public appearance as running mates on Wednesday afternoon, after President Trump, his Republican allies and conservative hosts on Fox News unfurled a string of sexist attacks on Ms. Harris.

Mr. Trump added to the barrage with a racist tweet on Wednesday morning claiming that Mr. Biden would put another Black leader, Senator Cory Booker, in charge of low-income housing in the suburbs. That tweet did not mention Ms. Harris, but it continued Mr. Trump’s tactic of playing into white racist fears about integration efforts as he declared, “The ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me.”

this seems unusually candid for the NYT

xpost - Yeah, same here. We've tried leaving mail in our mailbox for the carrier to take, but they only take it if we personally hand it to them. So more often than not, I'll just walk to a drop box when I need to mail something.

the drop box near my house was modified so that you can only put envelopes in it, or nothing thicker than about an inch; not sure if they are all like this now, I assume it was to prevent people from shoving dog shit and trash in it but given that the closest post office also doesn't have a drop box for packages, it's pretty annoying.

But that could probably be said about a lot of jobs.

Which is why I've never been able to figure out the USPS. The supermarkets I go to, for example, everyone is visibly busting their ass and generally helpful and friendly. And I've got to assume they're getting paid less than postal workers, and with worse (if any) benefits. Heck, that's probably true of most retail/behind the counter work. So why would postal workers be particularly grouchy or disgruntled?

Our mail carriers - who, again, awesome, no complaints - do pick up from us when we tuck things into our mailbox, but I usually just walk it to a box, anyway, rather than have the letter or whatever hang out there for hours.

Anyway, postage (like gas prices) is far lower than what it should be for the services rendered, no matter how grouchy the employees are.

xp yep, same here wrt drop off boxes. there was a series of incidents of stealing through the slot so now we're all hamstrung.

I NEVER SAID HE WASN’T https://t.co/GaLhqvsBfp

— Paul F. Tompkins (@PFTompkins) August 12, 2020

I want to see all yours yelp reviews before I take yours opinions on post office workers seriously!!

Busting ones ass is lame

would like to go on record as having never used yelp as it is a scam

A couple years ago, I was working from home and happened to look out the window to see a post office truck pull up at our front gate and an employee stand up at the open door of the truck (i.e. without leaving the truck) and throw a small package about 25 feet toward our front door. When I told my mother-in-law, who was a letter carrier for almost 25 years, she got so angry she made me call my local post office and complain.

The supermarkets I go to, for example, everyone is visibly busting their ass and generally helpful and friendly.

How many times a week do you say “if you have time to lean, you have time to clean”?

come on usps employees, put some elbow grease into it

xpost I should try that on my kids!

Time to Lean

https://ctl.s6img.com/society6/img/YqrQ7R5bSM1ILd8fWWcDjkUPN2I/w_1500/prints/~artwork/s6-original-art-uploads/society6/uploads/misc/6ba89dc81e9245d992a417b7a6393baa/~~/lean-in-love1632018-prints.jpg