Honey she said...

Sometimes my wife calls me honey.   Usually, when I hear this I know it is going to cost me something.  Inside, I wonder if actually this is her way of calling me a drip!   Did you know there are 29,184 drips of honey in one pound?   Can you imagine the poor nut that sat at a table with one pound of honey drip, drip, dripping away all day?   I can just hear his wife saying "so honey, how was your day?" 

Speaking of slow drips...I intend to share a few thoughts on the United States Postal Service.   Let me set the table by saying that there are a few hard working individuals there.   Let me also say, there are some "workers" there that do nothing!!!   I have seen several  individuals sitting and chatting while a paying customer waited for TWENTY MINUTES for service.   I know because it was me.   We mail quite a few mailings at the local sorting center every month, and when you see the chaos that is churning away behind closed doors, you wonder how anything ever gets done.   In contrast, go to a UPS, or FEDEX facility and you will see everybody busy with a well organized task working like bees!   They produce honey.   The USPS produces wax.  

On our last mailing, which was a magazine that mails to something like 23 different countries, our dear Post Office called to complain that the weight we had entered on the official form was off by .003 of a pound.   I should also say that we had "over paid" by that amount.   We had to have someone return to the Post Office (a half hour drive) and re-do the form to the correct weight!   The worker bee that called was polite and may I say totally nuts...how he managed to say all of that without laughing I do not know.

If you wonder how the USPS keeps losing money every year, this is partly why.   The rate to mail a magazine involves, how many pages or percentage of pages of advertising is in each issue, total weight (to the thousandth of an once) then they must be sorted by zip code etc. banded in groups depending on number mailed per zip code, placed in bags and tagged by zip code destination, many pages of shipping forms filled out and then paid by check.   Now imagine that everytime you call with a question, you get someone who gives a different answer than the person who accepts the finished mail bags.   Every mailing is different and every person asked a question gives a different answer, every worker bee in the back has a different opinion on how everything needs to be done.   Miss one little detail and the whole process grinds to a halt, and you get to start over.

Why won't the USPS just take any package, check the weight-check the zip code-and be done with it.   Instead, we have a pink elephant that has slowly but surely, slowed service down with mountains of paper work, slow unenthusiastic staff, endless regulations, volumes of detail that change daily, that will not change because it has grown to big.   Drop Saturday delivery of mail, and UPS along with FEDEX etc...have won the game.  

I need to stop and get a cup of coffee to steady my nerves.   Am I alone in wondering why the Post Office runs like honey in winter?