Quote:
Originally Posted by zeno
I have to give credit where due. There is no other major
country that you can drop a letter & have it arrive in a
few days almost anywhere in the US 99.999% of the time.
AND at a cost MUCH less...
|
From the standpoint of delivery and sorting accuracy statistics, the USPS is nothing short of miraculous.
My Grandfather was the Postmaster of a Railway Post Office that ran between Detroit, Buffalo, Albany, and NYC from the late 1950s until they discontinued his particular RPO sometime after 1967. They sorted all the mail (down to the individual route!) being delivered between those three cities, plus all the mail for all the small towns and stops along the way. He had to give random periodic assessments to test the accuracy of the sorting clerks on the train. 94% accuracy was considered grounds for dismissal. 96% was an automatic warning, three of which would result in dismissal. This was in the 50s. No big machines, just a guy on a stool in a railcar.
Nowadays with the new automated equipment, sorting errors are even less common.
There's this perception that working as a clerk for the USPS is easy work. It isn't. It's fairly highly skilled and requires, or at least used to require, an uncanny memory. Just ask the men in the National Guard who tried to deliver the mail during the strike of '70. They failed at it. Miserably.
To those individuals, many of whom would probably fail the postal service entrance examinations, who still choose to gripe about the USPS I say this: Go pick the item up yourself if it is truly that sensitive.