Postal Inefficiencies
The Post Office offers an online service to ship packages. You go on, setup an account, put in the adresses, click and voila, you have a paid for shipping label. They even now have the flat rate priority mail box which you could stuff full of lead and it they would still ship it anywhere for around $10 flat rate. Today though, I discovered the inefficiencies of the system. I had my flat rate box, I even got a discount of 50c off the published rate for doing the transaction online. I was happy. Then, the voila just didn’t happen.
I can’t put this box in a blue mailbox. I had to actually take it to the post office, wait in line and then have the woman behind the counter begin asking me all those questions I had already answered online - “No, it isn’t anything liquid (even though it is;) No, it isn’t anything breakable (even though it is;) No, I am not trying to ship nuclear materials to Pennsylvania on the cheap….. What is the purpose of going through the whole online transaction if it doesn’t actually save any time?
The good side of all this is that I was able to get out of the office on this nice sunny summer afternoon. I do actually like the Gus E Solomon Courthouse Post Office Branch and am always amazed by the art deco flair. And I got a coffee. So be it.
Yep — I had a *15* minute wait on Thursday with packages that I’d already paid for online.
I agree with you Diesel, having boxes that fit into a standard blue box would really make sense. I guess though you could also pass it off to your mail carrier when they come to deliver the daily mail…Though doing that would also takes more effort and planing.
I was at Solomon Courthouse Post Office today too. The architecture definitely takes the edge off of waiting in line. Pretty cool bottle collection there too.