We Love Our Post Office
Don Boudreaux, an inspired George Mason University Econ professor, takes issue in a recent blog with a radio reporter. The commentator confuses the alleged ill-effects of marijuana with the perils of the consumer-supplier transaction. That's like saying venison can kill you because in your pursuit of the deer you might accidentally blow your head off. Or an astigmatic fellow hunter might do it for you. Products are one thing - transactions, another. Dr. Boudreaux understands this - the media does not.
It reminded me of a transaction at my post office. (Intellectual confusion always reminds me of a transaction at my post office.) Even though I own several communication devices; telephones, computers, and a loud authoritative voice, I'm a heavy consumer of U. S. Postal Service products and services. If the USPS was an organization interested in profit or wooing of customers, they would bow low when I entered their federal premises. And they would address me as "Mr. Roberts" instead of "bud". And when I stepped up to the counter to buy my weekly roll of 100 stamps, they'd gratefully serve me a couple of cookies alongside a hot cup of that expensive Central American coffee.
But that's not their mind set. In fact, if they weren't nice people, they'd ask me to wait until they finished the novel in their lap. But basically they are nice people entrapped in a convoluted, incentiveless system. So, hiding their irritation, they put down Gone With The Wind and fill my huge stamp order - but, of course, without the volume discount I deserve. Non-profits don't believe in customer incentives.
Once, half drugged from licking and sealing my daily stack of outgoing mail, I asked to see the supervisor. I had an inspirational idea to share - an idea to expedite the mailing of packages. I suggested they mount a scale on that big public counter. Customers could weigh their packages and then via the stamp machine, purchase the requisite postage. Voila! No line. (Maybe there was a monetary award for this kind of system improvement! I could buy more stamps, better stationary, send stuff 1st Class.)
The Super metaphorically doused me with cold water. Lousy idea, she said, as she laid down her copy of The Brothers Karamazov. The public was NOT TRAINED in weighing operations. They'd get it wrong. Packages would be flowing two directions in the postal system; from senders to recipients - from recipients back to senders. No good. I went home discouraged and wrote three long letters just so I'd feel better.
I am not making this up. (Except for the reading material. They were really doing crossword puzzles.)
But in all honesty, let me add that two years later such a system was in operation.
Comments (5)
slim
Please fix the grammar. I can't even read your post.
Published: June 20, 2006 8:11 PM
Harris
And the spelling, Don deserves an 'X' at the end of his name.
Published: June 20, 2006 8:13 PM
fancyleprachaun
Odd... the post office off 75 in Richardson, TX had a digital scale that let you know the cost for several different classes of mail.
It had a zero out button, etc.
I'm sure many post offices have them.
The supervisor just doesn't know anything past his own office which probably hasn't changed in years.
Published: June 21, 2006 2:20 AM
Ike Hall
I never thought I'd say this, but I have recently found that the United States Postal Service is a model of efficiency and excellent customer service...when compared to Russia's. I purchased stamps last month for three postcards in the St. Petersburg train station post office. I stood in thone line for ten minutes before the postal worker told me to go to the other window. There, I waited at the window for five minutes for the clerk to show up. I handed her the postcards and told her the destination. She disappeared into a back room and returned a few minutes later with stamps. She then decided her stamp-wetting sponge was not wet enough and went back again. (The other customers and I were now grinning and pantomiming stamp-licking.) She returned and wet each stamp, in order of its denomination, and placed it on the card. Each card got three stamps, all placed one at a time in the same order. Very neatly done, but hardly worth my time. She told me the price, I gave her some rubles, and she disappeared again to get change. She handed the postcards back to me along with the change! I had to put them in the mailbox myself, after all that!
Published: June 24, 2006 5:50 PM
Ike Hall
P.S. On the other hand, in Estonia, I bought stamps at a food vendor's kiosk and stuck 'em to the cards myself. The transaction took all of fifteen seconds. So maybe I shouldn't cut the USPS any slack.
Published: June 24, 2006 5:54 PM