Slow Burn About the Postal Service

So we’re sitting in our front room at eleven am when I check email about arrival of an expected package. Amazon says unfortunately the Postal Service’s attempt to deliver your package failed.

Wait, what? The front door is six paces from my computer. Nobody knocked. No Postal Service truck stopped in front of my house. Other houses got UPS and FedEx deliveries, as they do almost daily. Me too, when my order is shipped with one of those. Despite Alabama news about a rogue FedEx driver dumping packages, private carriers have been reliable all through the pandemic.

I try to email Amazon for more information. But of course there is no human there; only automated lists of “suggested” things I might ask about. None apply. They do offer me a USPS “tracking number.”

The number is TWENTY-TWO digits long.

Call the local postmaster. Nope, no human there either. Robots don’t explain things. After laborious input of the number, this robot only says another “attempt” will be made next time the postman comes around. Which will be two days from now. Maybe.

Only thing I can imagine is the postman didn’t want to get his feet wet. There are puddles in the street from overnight rain. Imagine that: rain puddles in Western Washington in December!

I grew up in Florida, where postmen delivered the day after hurricanes ripped through, winds still high, power lines down, trees across roads. My mother retired from the Postal Service after decades of getting the mail through. My ex-wife did the same; in the nineties, when she got clipped by a car on her walking route — she got up and limped through the rest of her route before going to the ER.

They both followed the unofficial Post Office creed, as did so many others across the years: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. A creed associated with the U.S. Mail at least since it was “set in stone” on New York City’s General Post Office Building in 1914.

Reliable Wikipedia tells us the phrase comes from a translation of The Persian Wars by Herodotus, a Greek historian. He reported that during wars against the Persians (500–449 B.C.) the latter operated a system of mounted postal couriers who served “with great fidelity.” (And so did our own Pony Express, “orphans preferred,” risking their scalps to race against hostile natives, carrying the mail in frontier days.)

“The slogan,” Wikipedia says glumly, “is not a formal commitment, and in fact the USPS routinely delays mail during bad weather. Similarly, the USPS has been increasingly imposing a policy of mail carriers stopping delivery long before the gloom of night…although it can cause mail delays.”

No mention of mid-day mud puddles. Or hangnails.

Sic Transit Gloria Post Office. If you want to complain, talk to the algorithm.