Going Postal

Hardly anything happens by mail anymore. With e-mail, cell phones, texting, Facebook, voice mail, Twitter and electronic banking the post office is struggling to make ends meet on much lower mail volumes. Plans are afoot to halt Saturday mail deliveries, to help with the Post Office budget shortfall/deficit/screwup.

I think this is a bad idea. Instead, they should continue to deliver mail 6 days a week but assign each carrier two routes - one gets deliveries Mon, Wed, Fri and the other gets deliveries Tue, Thu, Sat.

Nobody would wait more than one mail day longer than under the current scheme, and mail volume is down so much that two days worth of mail won't be a much of a burden for the carriers.

The postal service could lay off half the carriers and get rid of half its fleet, yielding a budget surplus big enough to justify cutting the price of postage. That might just put them back in the game!

(Funny - I sent this idea to them five years ago, and haven't heard a thing. Next time, I'll use e-mail...)

While you're waiting for them to do something brilliant you might stock up on a few forever stamps as a hedge against the reality of the situation.