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US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

theguardian.com

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Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#41

Post by carnivor »

aty268 wrote: post #34

USPS has been bound to fail for years. Isn't HN all about efficiency? What's so great about wasting money on a company that can't compete in the private markets and refuses to innovate? Give it to the markets, but give them tax breaks or loans for offering services USPS offered. (Shipping to far away areas for a low cost, for example) It's incredibly that some people still think we should have this cash burning & hor…

Copy/pasting jorblumesea's comment above that I think answers your questions.

"It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal.

I honestly don't get it. Most services in most countries run at a loss but they provide huge public benefits so it's worth it. The USPS allows people to vote, seniors to get their medication, people to pay mortgages or send packages.

It seems so non-political and yet somehow even the most basic of services provided by the government are now a battleground.

I feel like this country has just collectively lost its mind."

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#42

Post by Jtsummers »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #31
stingraycharles wrote: post #3

Genuine question: seems like this is mostly a political post without much relation to the typical content one would expect on HN. Is there some kind of “off-topic” policy at HN for these things, or is it fair game given that enough people upvote it? Edit: article seems to be flagged now, guess I have my answer.

HN has an off-topic policy, but it's enforced primarily by user flagging. In recent months, there's been a large influx of people who feel political activism is so important that it needs to happen everywhere, so posts tend to get upvoted faster than they can be flagged. You'll note that this article now has a [flagged] tag next to it, which means enough users flagged it that it's removed from the feed.

It's probably not new users, but the current time period. This is a US election year, which (for US users in particular) brings many political topics to the fore. Some posts are more appropriate here than others, but political content in general will get more attention as a result.

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#43

Post by Scoundreller »

faitswulff wrote: post #11
Scoundreller wrote: post #2

> DeJoy instructed USPS employees to leave mail behind if it delayed carriers from their routes I mean, this does make sense. The more time you can spend doing the route itself, instead of waiting or coming back mid-way for whatever couldn’t be sorted in time in the morning is more “lean” efficient. While some mail would take an extra day, it results in more mail delivered per carrier-hour.

It makes sense in isolation except that it’s illegal and leads to delays in delivering or attempting to deliver, say, first class mail.

If they already have stuff waiting for days to be delivered, I don’t understand the insistence on delivering stuff that arrived in the afternoon. Either way they’re out of compliance with the law.

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#44

Post by carnivor »

Shame that this got flagged.

From the site Guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon..."

I'd say that rampant voter suppression in the United States is a an interesting new phenomenon.

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#45

Post by iron0013 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #38
iron0013 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to mail carriers, the actual result is an ever-growing backlog of undelivered mail. The first mail to be delayed may only be one day late, but as the backlog grows, the undelivered mail gets later and later on average.

It sounds like carriers are being given more than they could possibly deliver in a day. If that’s true, it’s still better to leave with what you can first-thing in the morning, than wait at the depot or return to the depot mid-shift. Trying to deliver something that arrived at noon today doesn’t make sense when you have stuff from 2-3 days ago still waiting.

Somehow I suspect that the folks at the USPS have put at least as much thought into the logistics of mail delivery as HN commenters in this thread have—maybe even a little more if such a thing can be conceived!

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#46

Post by aty268 »

carnivor wrote: post #41
aty268 wrote: post #34

USPS has been bound to fail for years. Isn't HN all about efficiency? What's so great about wasting money on a company that can't compete in the private markets and refuses to innovate? Give it to the markets, but give them tax breaks or loans for offering services USPS offered. (Shipping to far away areas for a low cost, for example) It's incredibly that some people still think we should have this cash burning & hor…

Copy/pasting jorblumesea's comment above that I think answers your questions. "It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal. I honestly don't get it. Most services in…

Would you want a socialized fast food chain, or computer company? Probably not, and do you know why? It's because these are services clearly designed for the market to solve. I hope we can agree there. Delivery is just something that's FAR more efficient in the markets.

And the difference in inefficiency is just going to grow. Look at what UPS has been doing the past x years. They constantly reinvest money into new tech and decreasing labor, and USPS just gets more money from the government.

It's a fair question to ask "at what difference in cost should we stop giving USPS money because we're wasting so much of it". I think we've reached that difference already.

You know what happens when you raise a child with an unlimited allowance and no incentive to work?

America will stay ahead because of our belief in the private markets. Socialization of services can do good in the short term, but almost always looses out to competition in the long term.

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#47

Post by psadauskas »

asabjorn wrote: post #30
prions wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is anything about his hamfisted (publicly admitted) attempt to disenfranchise voters even close to cunning? Maybe it’s because his party and half of America is also on board with it?

If someone can stand in line for the cashier at Home Depot and Whole Foods, they can also do so at the voting booth. Mail-in voting has no tracking of the voter receiving the ballot and if a filled out ballot is counted. It also has no verification of who votes and no protection to make the vote anonymous.

Yeah, none of that is true. There was a recent article about how it works in Colorado: https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-denver-mail-v...

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#48

Post by Scoundreller »

iron0013 wrote: post #45
Scoundreller wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like carriers are being given more than they could possibly deliver in a day. If that’s true, it’s still better to leave with what you can first-thing in the morning, than wait at the depot or return to the depot mid-shift. Trying to deliver something that arrived at noon today doesn’t make sense when you have stuff from 2-3 days ago still waiting.

Somehow I suspect that the folks at the USPS have put at least as much thought into the logistics of mail delivery as HN commenters in this thread have—maybe even a little more if such a thing can be conceived!

If we all thought that way, this place would be dead.

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#49

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Jtsummers wrote: post #42
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has an off-topic policy, but it's enforced primarily by user flagging. In recent months, there's been a large influx of people who feel political activism is so important that it needs to happen everywhere, so posts tend to get upvoted faster than they can be flagged. You'll note that this article now has a [flagged] tag next to it, which means enough users flagged it that it's removed from the feed.

It's probably not new users, but the current time period. This is a US election year, which (for US users in particular) brings many political topics to the fore. Some posts are more appropriate here than others, but political content in general will get more attention as a result.

True. I don't remember it being so bad in 2016 - but then again I spent much less time reading HN then.

Re: US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

#50

Post by kube-system »

ceejayoz wrote: post #35
kube-system wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is due to their financial structure, not simply a cultural expectation. The USPS isn’t funded by taxes at all, so of course they need revenue from operations.

It doesn't have to be that way, though, right? We could make up the shortfalls with a subsidy. There's a bill to do exactly that in the House right now.

Correct, but that's the reason why it is fundamentally different than other government services, like the military.
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