going postal

In a stark contrast between a private service organization and a government monopoly, the Darby/Conner/Sula postmaster has declared war on his customers.

This dweeb has decreed that all addresses MUST CONFORM to his whimsical rules or be returned to sender. CUSTOMERS in his SERVICE AREA are now having phones cut off for non payment of bills that did not get delivered, late fees on credit cards for non-payment of undelivered bills, orders and payments for business accounts returned to sender, credit ratings getting wrecked, the local credit union has returned mail stacking up, power company bills don’t reach customers and much, much more.

Because somebody put Ed Jolly into the job as POSTMASTER.

WooHoo! I am Emperor. They must do as I say.

We have all met guys like this once or twice in our lives. In the free market they get to drive the choo-choo in the children’s playground or sell ice cream bars from a truck cruising the neighborhoods emitting horrible repetitious chimed noise. But apparently, the government-granted-monopolists who by federal law own ALL house-to-house mail delivery don’t mind putting him in charge of three post offices.

No business that depended on voluntary customers would keep him three minutes.

In our area they will not deliver to private mailboxes. This has long been the policy. Okay, they will give you a free post office box … well, that policy is open to whimsical interpretation as we paid for two years before they admitted it should be free. Nevertheless, our only choice for letter delivery is their post office box. You know, the simple:
Ted Dunlap
P.O. Box 555 (not a real number)
Conner, MT 59827.

Oh no. Not for the jolly dufus. He recently arrived on the scene and changed the rules. If your senders write “P. O. Box” we will return to sender.

HUH????

These are small post offices. Workers recognize customers by face. Any 10-year old could deliver mail to the right boxes. But the dweeb prohibits it. He orders his subordinates to return the mail as undeliverable! The only good news is that he isn’t real strong on the work ethic side, so the employees have a lot of time where they can simply deliver the mail without worrying about The Boss jumping on their case.

If you live in an apartment, court or trailer park, you cannot use your lot number of your residence in your address. That is too confusing … now that The Dweeb is in charge of the kingdom. You must use your P.O. Box, but for goodness sakes, don’t call it a “P.O.Box”.

Joe Schmuck
1234 West Road, Apt 12
Box 555
Sula, MT 59871

That won’t work. You cannot have an apartment number in your address.

Joe Schmuck
Box 555
Sula, MT 59871

That won’t work. The sender left off your street address. How the heck can we find your P. O. Box without the street address on the envelope????

For goodness sakes! Zip codes have been all the US Postal Service has needed since 1963 to get a letter to your post office. From there, the box number makes proper delivery idiot-proof. But Ed is worse than an idiot.

On it goes. My compliant wife has been struggling for two months to jump through the jolly old fellow’s hoops. But it isn’t working. The only thing that seems to get the mail through is his regular absence from overseeing those who earn their living by actually delivering the mail.

Of course if you try to change your addresses, the private carriers UPS and Fed Ex cannot deliver to you any more because the jolly fella ordered you to take out your residence number. Even more destructive, most computer-based systems cannot accept addresses in the Ed Jolly format. The boxes in the forms aren’t the right shape and have edits to prevent his format from being input.

You cannot change your address with the various senders to suit him.

Yet he prohibits USPS delivery of mail that the competitors could easily deliver.

Well, for that matter, any of the lower level local workers could deliver as long as happy Ed isn’t in the office.

You can imagine I am more than ready for his forever vacation. I mean, he must be near the seniority level all federal bureaucrats reach with 52 weeks of vacation every year.