What affect will the Post Office consolidation have?

I read yesterday about the Post Office consolidating and closing some facilities, which kind of makes me sad because I use the Post Office a lot for mailing my books.

But then I thought about it--I don’t actually use the Post Office, I use the US Postal Service. I have a program and monthly subscription with Endicia.com to allow me to print postage from my computer. That way I can print up postage whenever I need to, and we drop the mail off at the Post Office whenever we’re out next doing errands, or my husband will drop it off on his way to or from work. It helps out in terms of the time I spend standing in line at the Post Office, and I don’t use up gas to drive down there just to send mail.

I’m sad about the jobs that will be cut because the economy is hurting as it is. And this isn’t really true in my neighborhood, but in Hawaii, the postal workers are a friendly bunch. They’ll chat with you if they happen to see you when they’re delivering mail, they’ll sometimes pick up your stamped packages even if you haven’t filled out an official pick-up notification, and people in Hawaii will usually give gifts to their postal workers for Christmas. It will be sad to have those postal workers out of a job when they contribute so much to the local community.

Are you friendly with your local postal worker?

Comments

Pattie said…

Because I mail a lot of books, I end up in my local PO a lot. Many of the POs on military installations are the ones cutting hours or closing completely. Kinda sad. I'd be willing to give up Saturdays and only have Mon-Fri delivery. Or, Tues-Sat would work too.

Thu Apr 19, 10:25:00 AM 2012

Camy Tang said…

Pattie, from what I've read on the web, several will be cutting Saturdays and only going M-F. I'm okay with that, too.

Thu Apr 19, 05:03:00 PM 2012

Susan F. said…

We are losing a distribution center here in Maine. It is going to add at least 3 days to the delivery of some or most of our mail. It's going to make things hard for those with deadlines.

Fri Apr 20, 10:53:00 AM 2012

Camy Tang said…

Oh my gosh, THREE days??? That's awful!

Fri Apr 20, 04:42:00 PM 2012

Marian said…

My mail carrier will pick up outgoing packages without notification. When I was a girl, we could leave letters in the mailbox with the correct amount of money and the mailman would get stamps for us and put them on the letter. I don't really know my carrier, but my cat does.

Wed Apr 25, 11:00:00 AM 2012

Camy Tang said…

Wow that's really nice of your mail carrier! My mail carrier won't do that, I have to take any packages to the post office or make sure I put in a notification for pick up.

Wed Apr 25, 11:40:00 AM 2012

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