Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Lakewood post office to buy 1-cent stamps. The price of a first-class mailing went from 41 to 42 cents on Monday.
I long ago stopped expecting anything remotely resembling competence from the U.S. Postal Service. I’ve had my mail stolen, I’ve had it lost and found and lost again (including the time it sat in the post office for 11 months without anyone there knowing about it), and I’ve even had the agency cash a check for stamps by mail without ever seeing the stamps. In fact, the postal service still owes me $41.
And I decided I would not write about the agency’s numerous failings. It wasn’t worth the effort. But yesterday’s performance was so incredibly inept that I decided I had to say something.
• At 3 o’clock on the day of a postage increase, there was one clerk on duty at the Lakewood station. One. The line stretched to the door of the selling area and out.
• None of the vending machines in the lobby had 42- or 1-cent stamps. There were still selling 41- and 2-cent stamps from the last increase.
• There were also, apparently, no 1-cent stamps for sale at the counter, if I had braved the line. I stopped by the Lake Highlands station this morning (one clerk on duty, who laughed when someone asked her about it), and was told there weren’t any 1-cent stamps in the entire city. They had not yet arrived from the printer, she said. The Lake Highlands station did have 1-cent stamps in the vending machines, but were sold out.
In other words, incompetence of the highest order.
Somehow, the postal service can sponsor cycling teams and movies about John Adams. But it is incapable of selling stamps. News flash for postal service: No one gives a damn if you sponsor cycling teams or moves. We want you to sell stamps.
I do not believe in conspiracy theories, but. … Did some genius at the postal service see a chance to bolster the agency’s cash-strapped bottom line by forcing us to put 2-cent stamps on letters? Did they want to boost sales of the so-called forever stamp, figuring we would buy those when we couldn’t buy penny stamps?
Or are they just incompetent?
Actually, I’m leaning toward the latter. I doubt that anyone in charge at the postal service is talented enough to be the brains behind a conspiracy.
And, for what it’s worth, I have made numerous offers over the years for postal service officials, whether in Lakewood, Dallas or Washington, to talk to me on the record about this stuff. And none of them have ever — ever — even had the courtesy to answer an email or return a phone call. Which is about what I would expect.
