The End of a Postal Era -- Not Quite Yet

Just when I thought it was going to be safe to not stop at the post office on a Saturday, they went and didn’t change the rules.

The board that governs the the U. S. Postal Service previously decided it was going to discontinue Saturday deliveries starting in August of this year.  This was being done as a cost-cutting measure and I assume they were waiting that long to implement it to give everybody ample time to rearrange their dwindling mailing schedule.  Okay, I know there’s a whole process that they have to go through, including Congress having a part in the decision, before they can discontinue mail delivery on any day of the week.  I just had to take a sad jab at the decreased use of USPS and how they’re being delivered out of existence by a lack of revenue and practices that don’t lend themselves to budgetary reform.

The reason they’re backing off the decision is that Congress didn’t approve the change.  Okay, again more complicated than that, but let’s just go with it for now.  So, Saturday deliveries are back on the table.  The letters, bills, and junk mail will continue to fill mail boxes.  Package delivery wasn’t going to stop, by the way.  Heaven forbid that they lose out on that piece of competition to FedEx, UPS and the like.  Post offices would also still be open on Saturdays.  You could still pick up your mail that you didn’t pick up on Friday, get those still delivered packages, buy stamps, bask in the lighting and heating of whatever amount of square feet your post office’s customer service area might be, etc.

Trimming any budget is a slow and sometimes painful process.  Discontinuing Saturday mail deliveries was perhaps the gentlest measure they could come up with that the public would have to get used to.  For most Americans, we’ve grown up with getting mail to our door, rural delivery box or post office six days a week.  To some, taking away that sixth day must seem like taking away one of our rights.  But, it’s not.  It was a business decision, made to try to cut some costs so that the postal service wouldn’t continue to financially bleed out.  Congress’s reluctance to move this decision along is baffling. Yes, I realize it wasn’t going to help that much, but it was a step in the right direction. 

The United States Postal Service must evolve, must change how it does business, in order to survive.   It’s not as simple as reducing hours and closing post offices.  It’s not as simple as upping the cost of stamps another penny, and don’t get me started on that asinine process.  Benjamin Franklin would likely not recognize the now overweight and out of shape mail delivery behemoth that he helped bring into existence centuries ago.  There is still much that is good about USPS, but it needs an overhaul and it needs everyone who is part of that decision making process on board to make it happen.  If losing Saturday delivery in toto (that means no deliveries and shutting down, folks) is part of that, so be it.  After all, a penny saved is a penny earned, and maybe a penny less we have to pay in postage.