I like taking things out of context too.

I don't think I've ever really had a bad experience at the post office other than slow lines but that generally is more the fault of the people who apparently don't understand that more work is involved on their part than showing up with a present in a milk crate and having a vague hopeful notion that it will go to some other part of the world.

But again, I wasn't trying to say that the USPS isn't stupid or incompetent. Just that if this is stupid and incompetent it is a broadly accepted stupid incompetency.

The USPS put my sister and I through college (well, indirectly) - my dad was a postal clerk for 35 years.

How did it feel being raised by an incompetent idiot?

Ouch, Alex.

I actually know a guy who works for USPS repairing the trucks. He's in Mensa. Of course, part of it is that he knows in order to hold any higher-up job in the organization, (postmaster of a city, all the way up to Postmaster General), you have to have worked a year in the lower ranks. Also, he knows most of the people he works with are idiots so he figures the competition for those higher-up jobs isn't too stiff.

Sorry, that was meant as a joke based on the issue of the thread.

I have no bad thoughts about postal workers.

Even if I did, I wouldn't air them. I hear they carry weapons and are not afraid to use them :P

There's a mailbox place in a nearby strip mall called Goin' Postal. I just find that too tasteless to consider patronizing them. Really, I needed a notary and they were closest but I went to Kinko's instead just because of the name.

one of my old FedEx customers was a place called "Go Postal" and I thought the same thing. But I had to go there

Well the Post Office has changed a whole lot. Like CM, my Dad was a mail carrier for nearly 30 years and it was a different place to work back then. I know at my Dad's postal station a good number of the carriers are postal clerks were ex-Navy, God knows it felt like half of the guys that served on the same aircraft carrier my Dad served on worked in the same Post Office.

I remember standing in lines just as long back when a first class mail stamp was 8 cents, the difference then, the postal workers behind the counters knew their business. Now my experience is the same in that there are long lines if I have to go in and different because the answer to a question I am looking for is different or totally wrong depending on which clerk I speak with. It's amazing how many clerks do not know the services the USPS is supposed to offer.

This is why I do a goodly amount of my USPS business online, so I can just go and drop my mail and not have to deal with the person I'm assuming is an idiot behind the counter. I know it's not an easy job, and I am sure dealing with the public is no picnic either in many cases. But that's not an excuse not to know your job.

Of course, in our neighborhood, we're the training route for the carriers and I consider it a good day to actually find my own mail in the box.