The Post Office is the New Battleground in the War on Christmas

[Elf Hermey]

In one of the strangest twists in the War on Christmas President Trump, for a change, is being accused of picking a fight that adversely affects Christmas enthusiasts. Normally he’s a hero to the pro-Christmas crowd with his continual insistenceRead more

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[Grandpa Gus]

It's hard for me to figure out where I stand on this. For decades I was a letter carrier and watched as the volume of Christmas cards declined from a time when it was not unusual to have 10 to 12 trays of cards and letters to now the carrier who delivers my mail has maybe 2 or 3.  As a former carrier it was also my responsibility to collect mail from the blue boxes on corners, at first all you would find in them was outgoing mail, but as the years went by I began to find trash, half eaten food, milk shakes were pretty bad on the letters in the collection boxes (very hard to clean off ).  In the boxes near the lake it was not uncommon to find dead worms, minnows, small fish people had caught and didn't want even dead birds. I often found, especially after the fourth of July, mail burned from having fire works thrown in the boxes. Towards the end of my time as a letter carrier it was not unusual to find used baby diapers or even women's used sanitary products  in the collection boxes. With little or no out going mail in the boxes. The forum we are using here has replaced the need to write letters. I wish that people still wrote letters, they were some thing tangible, you could hold in your hand and almost feel the time,  the emotion that the writer put into it, but we now have phones and email to replace letters. So the blue boxes on the corner are obsolete, they see little or no use. They should be retired just like me. This is one place that the Post Office can reduce it's overhead, by not having to care for and maintain those things. But I will miss seeing them with the potential of having a full load of Christmas cards, love letters, bills being paid and just plain correspondence between people.   

[Santa Craig Maxwell]

Thanks for your service Santa, and also for this great testimony.

[Mervyn The Hired Hand]

Yesterday I received a 2-day Priority mail package that took 4 days to get to me from 60 miles away. Perhaps the post office is not doing so well in the behind-the-scenes budget wars.

Had a student in some of my university classes who was a mechanic for those enormous post office sorting machines they have been taking out of service lately, apparently because they improve efficiency too much. He thought they were effective in reducing costs, but complained there were too few mechanics hired to repair them. Sometimes he would miss a week of classes traveling to some far away city on overtime to do routine maintenance on one, because there were so few employees trained to service them. Not the least expensive way to maintain complex equipment.

I have the greatest sympathy for postal workers who feel helpless to protect and improve the post office, just because it is in somebody's ideology to privatize it, and who is willing to drive it into the ground to justify that ideology.  Political management of our great government institutions appears to have its drawbacks.

[Rob Thompson]

Hopefully all will be well in good time