The postal service fascinates me. I don't understand how it can function. Send a physical message to anyone in the country for less than a dollar? How is that allowed?
Haha, feels like the postal service goes out of its way to ship these things that a normal company would throw in the garbage.
Through rain, snow, shine, and the incredibly ridiculous.
Years ago I used to ship homebrew to competitions once in a while. Some brewers would label their shipments as "live yeast samples", and simply neglect to mention the alcohol content, to avoid issues as the post office.
Thank you for that cool article, as well as another site to bookmark for later (very cool stuff on there). My favourite one was
Dead fish, old seaweed, etc. Mailed in cardboard box. Notice to pick up at station, 7 days. The postal supervisor warned our mailing specialist that he could be fined for mail service abuse, even as a recipient, should this happen again.
That is very lenient.
I love the USPS. The line typically moves slow, but the rates are great and the postal workers in my town are very friendly. I ship a game book in a USPS flat rate envelope. The book is 2.4 lbs, and it barely fits. I have to use packaging tape to make sure it doesn't bust open. The package says that it cannot be sealed by other means, but they don't care. Anywhere in the US for less than $5. International is less than $15. Sending via UPS or FedEx is about 5x as expensive.
It just feels like UPS and FedEx are based in the real world and have to act like a normal company, concerned with costs and regulations, whereas USPS is based on an idea we want to be true and it does whatever it needs to in order to keep that nostalgic dream alive. How is this old-fashioned postal service viable in the digital age? Who cares, let's keep it around anyways.
Fun fact(s). Since 1971 USPS has been an independent agency of the US Government and hadn't, until very recently required any major taxpayer funding. In the last 5 or so years a combination of a bad economy, changing culture (internet) and a new requirement to pre-fund 75 years of healthcare for retirees..
Interesting. It appears that it was a GOP house at the time tooUSPS will default at midnight because it cannot pay $5.5 billion to retiree health benefits. Back in 2006, the Republican-dominated Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which mandated the USPS to “prefund all of its retirees’ health benefits” for the next 75 years. Naturally, they couldn’t afford to meet the requirement, and now find themselves in default six years later.