Going Postal
Today, I received seventeen pieces of mail which included an assortment of advertisements, bills, a bank statement, a letter from a law office and a union newsletter. Unfortunately, sixteen of the various items were addressed to other residents of my street and delivered to me in error despite the fact that each of the envelopes appeared to be addressed correctly.
I filed a complaint with the post office, but it seemed to be a thankless task undertaken solely for the purpose of exercise on my part. Quality customer service no longer seems to matter. Complaints about the Chicago post office seem to be routine. Like Mark Twain once said about the weather, everyone talks about it, but nothing is done about it.
I am dating myself by saying this, but, as a child, I can remember when the mail was delivered twice daily and the cost of a first class postage stamp was a nickel. Abraham Lincoln, the former postmaster of New Salem, Illinois, was depicted on the stamps that were printed with black ink. My parents and grandparents, of course, could recall mailing first class letters for mere pennies. The mail carriers and postal clerks of yesteryear actually seemed to care about their duties.
Somewhere in my film archives, I have a copy of an old movie entitled “Postal Inspector.” An intrepid postal employee (Ricardo Cortez) manages to foil the nefarious scheme of a disreputable nightclub owner (Bela Lugosi) to steal a shipment of used currency scheduled to be returned to the US Mint for destruction. In the same film, dedicated postal employees are seen fighting a cataclysmic flood (incorporating actual newsreel footage of the record floods of 1938) in order to deliver the mail without an interruption in service. Nobody blamed the torrential rains upon global warming during the Great Depression. An actor playing Franklin D. Roosevelt is seen thanking the postal employees for their splendid work. It goes without saying this particular drama is unlikely to be updated and remade for contemporary audiences.
Owing to shoddy mail delivery service in Chicago, I actually rented a post office box in the vain hope that I could pick up the mail and safeguard important envelopes from being lost in transit. Naturally enough, the postal workers cannot sort the mail on a timely basis even in their own building. I have had numerous important documents addressed to the post office box address lost in the mail including a deed mailed by the recorder of deeds for Lake County last April. I had to drive to Waukegan to obtain a duplicate copy of the missing deed. Yesterday, I received a renewal invoice for my post office box that was dated during January. A post it note was attached to the invoice apologizing for the eight month delay in billing me for the next rental period. It took eight months to place the notice in the box, but whose counting?
Last winter, I posted a letter containing a check which took eighteen days to reach Schaumburg after being sent from Chicago. The Federal Courts have adopted rules which permit alternative forms of delivering court documents without relying upon the post office. In the same vein, consider the fact that such companies as Federal Express, DHL, and an expanded United Parcel Service have essentially created or enlarged their respective businesses based upon the inefficiencies and repeated failings of the US Postal Service.
Long years ago, before the enactment of the Hatch Act, the United States Post Office provided local politicians with a valuable source of federal patronage to dispense to their followers. Two Chicago Postmasters actually were nominated for the office of mayor: Fred Busse, a Republican who had served in the state senate and had been the state treasurer, was appointed as the city postmaster by Theodore Roosevelt. In 1907, Busse defeated the incumbent mayor, Edward F. Dunne, and became the first Chicago mayor to serve a four year term. The current City Hall was constructed during his mayoralty. He remains the only German-American to have held office as Chicago’s mayor. He did not seek a second term. Twelve years later, another city postmaster, Arthur C. Lueder, secured the Republican mayoral nomination, but was defeated by the Democratic nominee, Judge William E. Dever in the 1923 general election. Lueder was not finished in party politics, however, as he served two terms as the Auditor of Public Accounts from 1941 to 1949. This statewide office was reorganized and renamed after the adoption of the Illinois Constitution of 1970 and is currently known as the state comptroller’s office.
Today, postal workers are civil servants who can sleepwalk through their rounds without being fired. Their union is so strong that it successfully lobbied a Democratic Congress to enact a law exempting postal employees from the ordinary rules concerning garnishment and wage deduction proceedings.
Without checking a reference guide or being gainfully employed by the postal service, can anyone name the current Chicago postmaster? Somehow, I doubt that this deservedly anonymous individual wants to be recognized publicly for fear of being harassed by consumers with complaints about poor service.
there’s a reason they were selingl those “forever” stamps at such a good price. i don’t think the post office will be around forever.
There is a good postal story for every bad one. Other private couriers also have good and bad stories.
Having had a family member that at one time held a position high in the Chicago Post Office thru the 40’s 50’s and 60’s I saw and heard how the once great system spiraled out of control. (If anyone remembers, most of the V Mail during WWII, that went overseas past thru Chicago and actually made it to the troops, now to make it accross the city in less than a week is a great accomplishment). The biggest problem that he related to me that caused this mess were the federal requirements of who had to be hired. No longer did it matter that an applicant be able to read english to sort thru the mail. What was the primary concern was an individuals ethnic background and sex and to fill the quotas.
I don’t care if a person is red, white, yellow, black or any shade in between. Nor do I care what sex or sexual orientation an individual is. All I want is a person that can read my name, address and put the correct envelope im my mail slot.
Today I just received a box with books for an individual at a address that is not even in the village in which I live. Good job U.S. Post Office.
The Post Office should either clean house or be privatized. The tax payers of United States need a reliable Post Office not a joke.
Firstly in response to what Joe Johnson says:
“There is a good postal story for every bad one. Other private couriers also have good and bad stories.”
September 12, 2008 at 10:39 a.m.
Thanks for making the point of Mr Kelley more clear! I reckon the Chicago post office has a 50% effective delivery rate by your statement. I enjoyed the laugh Joe, thanks for making my day.
Secondly, having lived around the country and continued to use various post offices in other regions, I can say with certitude that I have more incidences of lost mail in Shy town than in any other place I have lived.
Dan,
This is symptomatic of the declining work ethic of some of the United States work force in the Government sector. While many workers private industry workers prepare for a changing world and a flatter Earth, others will not. There is a perception fair or not that much of the work force does not care, is lazy, and will let shoddy work represent them.
As a PRIME example of this declining standard in its most graphic form one need to look no further than the Cook County Recorder of Deeds Office. If you look back in the tract books to the 1950’s and earlier, the handwriting looks like calligraphy. In the 1960’s the writing was crisp, the result of the Palmer method writing training, the most recent entries are illegible chicken scratch, which caused the implementation of a computer system in the middle to late 1980’s. Now the quality of this seems to be falling.
In the 1980’s when G Dunne was President of the Cook County Board, there were 18,000 County patrollers. When Dick Failen came in as President, after Georgey kissed the girls and made them cry was pushed out, he said he would cut jobs. When Dick was done cutting there were almost 23,000 employees. After four years Stroger Sr came in as the Pres. and set out to cut jobs, when he was done cutting there were 27,000 patrollers.
One additional comment: I think the only person that is expected to work tirelessly at the USPS in Chicago is the Union Steward.
waaa waaaa u know nothing about what goes on in the p. o. there are not enough workers they quit hiring 2 years ago do any of u know what that means well i will tell you 1 person in po is doing the job of 3 1 single carrier is haveing to do at least 1 and half routs daily yes there will be more mistakes and for the stamp cost what do you think the diff in fuel price is from just 2 years ago life is tough but it sure must be alot tougher for the stupid people
Given the demonstrated illiteracy of the preceding commenter (who has the gall to call others stupid), I think that I know what is going on in the post office.
In the glory years of the post office, the job of a mail carrier was viewed as being a poorly paid position that required an awful lot of work. Nevertheless, the past workers took pride in doing the job correctly. Now, the wages are much higher and but the work ethic of the personnel in Chicago is almost nonexistent.
Rita is right about the hiring of postal employees. The USPS has only hired temporary employees for the last several years. They do not have half the benefits that the rest of do. They do not have to go through any testing for hire. They just hire off the streets. You would find that the majority of the old timers are very conscientious about our jobs. There just is not enough of us to do a decent job anymore. One thing I do agree with though is that upper management in the U. S. Postal Service has forgotten what the last word in our name means.
On behalf of the vast majority of hardworking conscientious letter carriers, I apologize for the mis-delivery which inspired this article. I can’t explain the reason for this particular mistake without investigating it personally, but I can only say that mistakes sometimes happen in any business.
The postal service has changed quite a bit in the 22 years I’ve been working there. Much of the change has to do with automation techniques. In general, automation is a good thing in terms of lowering costs and raising productivity. However, the burden placed on the letter carriers is sizable. The machine-sorted mail has a ridiculous amount of errors which must be caught by the carrier as he delivers. As the length of routes has increased substantially over the years, and the primary requirement is to avoid overtime, mistakes are unfortunately more frequent.
The job of the manager used to be to get all the mail delivered to the right address at the right time, but in recent years that job has changed. Carriers are rarely reprimanded for mis-deliveries. They are however harassed to finish in 8 hours, even if the work they are given justifies more time. The pressure is not to do the job right, but to do it fast.
In regard to the price of postage, I remember when gasoline was 35 cents a gallon.
In regard to the “tax payers” comment, The Postal Service does not get any of its revenue from taxes, but pays its own way with income from stamps and other services.
My former mail carrier was punctual to the point of allowing us to set our watches by his daily delivery time. Since his passing, things have become decidedly worse.
For purposes of space, I could not relate all of the misdelivery problems that occurred in the last year, but the sixteen pieces of mail that I described in the first paragraph as being misdelivered was not an isolated event.
My worst experiences have occurred in the post office, itself. Customer service is poor at best. I have had a post office box for over five years, but those sorting the mail have often returned letters to senders stamped “addressee unknown.”
These problems seem to be unique to Chicago. I have adopted coping mechanisms such as delivering envelopes to suburban post offices for mailing or entering mail at the post office or using the zip code plus four whenever possible.
As some of the comments suggest, this seems to be partly an upper management problem.
Mailman1984 had a great post. The only thing that I might add is that the job of the lower level PO manager is that of data entry, and then DRIVING the carriers meet the productivity numbers that the data puts out. With no input from the carrier. The PO is spending more and more money on automated equipment, not on employees who provide the service. Even though we waved the cost in May, we will are still projected to loose 2 Billion this year. None of these decision were made by the low level manager, or carrier. While I appreciate the dilema of Mr. Kelley, the problem lies with Mr. Potter and his team of managers at El’Enphant Plaza in DC. So your complaint shoule be taken to Mr. Durbin, or Mr. Obama. Then you will see just exactly what “service” your money provides.
Activist:
This complaint was directed to both Messrs. Durbin and Obama months ago. In typical fashion, Senator Obama replied by expressing himself in terms of platitudes. Nothing happened afterwards.
Excellent column and comments. I just happened across this site but am having the same problems with misdelivered mail in Florida and I’m sure it’s nationwide.
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