Saturday Mail

I’ve had a box of stationery sitting out now for over a week. My intention is to write a letter to my nephew’s wife in Michigan. She sent me a beautiful 4-page letter with updated family pictures some time ago. It meant the world to me, as my family is so small, and I have no exceptional children or grandchildren – only an exceptional grand niece and grand nephew.

My nephew and his wife work for the postal service, so naturally we correspond my mail, rather than e-mail. So, today when I read about the loss of Saturday mail, I thought about how it would affect them, more than me. I put in a somewhat frantic call to my nephew who was on his rural route in the snowy North.

Like most of us, I wondered why would they continue with package service and not the mail. Aren’t the carriers going out anyway? He cleared that up right away. On this normal day, he had 15-20 packages and 450 houses to call on. So, the theory goes that after doing his route with packages only, there would be time to do 2 or 3 more routes. So, manpower is indeed saved. Why, I asked, are they still doing the packages on Saturday? He didn’t really know for sure, but said it had to do with politics – whatever that means.

He also told me that someone had made the decision to prepay postal employees’ health insurance through retirement to the tune of 11.2 billion. Folks, I haven’t fact-checked that, but I couldn’t help thinking about all the dollars the service spent sponsoring Lance Armstrong’s cycle racing team. Wouldn’t you love to know how these decisions are made?

Did you know that all postal employees are unionized – even some management? There are all kinds of protections for them, but they last only as long as their contract. The current one is in effect for 3 more years.

My nephew and his wife were both honor students in high school, and my nephew, is a bit of a mathematical genius. I was a little disappointed 18 years ago when they announced that they were going the postal route. I asked him in this conversation if he had it to do over again, would he work for the postal service. He said his wife definitely would, as it has worked well with their child-raising and other aspects of life, but he wouldn’t. He regrets not finishing college. He’s just 44, so my thinking is that he could have another whole career since our life spans keep getting longer and longer.

I started thinking about years past when there were so many shootings and horrible incidents that gave rise to the term “going postal.” Remember that? It’s been a while since one of our shootings has taken place within the postal service hasn’t it? I remember talking to them about it back then, and they had some real horror stories about treatment by their superiors. They told me that a real jerk of a boss was replaced by a very nice one, and that after a few weeks he was called in for not giving enough disciplinary write-ups. The theory was that he was probably being too easy on his staff. The truth was that people were happy to work for him and did a better job because they wanted to please him.

So, it’s 10 years and many bosses later, so I asked what percentage of them were miserable to work with. He said about 20-30% of them has been impossible in their 18-year careers. I don’t know if that’s higher than the national average or not. I’m guessing that most twenty-somethings don’t even know what “going postal” means. That’s a good thing.

Now, back to me. How do I feel about losing Saturday service? Even though I seldom see my mail person, I like knowing that there is a real person who handles all that stuff. I have great fear that we will lose the Postal Service in my lifetime. I am in the forefront of the high tech vs high touch culture. I remember reading in Megatrends 2000 that the more high tech we became the more high touch we would crave. Do you suppose that’s why Asian massage parlors seem to be cropping up everywhere like weeds?