# I pit myself and the fucking Post Office **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 14, 2007, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144 "2007-02-14T04:47:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/21 "2007-02-14T17:13:43Z")
[QUOTE=Can Handle the Truth] I should have paid the $14.50 (or whatever) for next day delivery. But my CD full of urgently-needed CAD drawings too big to email was going to a destination in the same city, and the postal clerk said it would almost definitely get there the next day by regular mail. Like a turd-eating schmuck I trusted her. That was last Thursday afternoon. Now it’s Tuesday evening and I’m entering the tracking number and I see that _the father-sucking package has not even fucking left the mother-cunt-eating post office yet_! Dog-cock-suckers, burn in hell! [/QUOTE] [This Amazon online storage option seems](http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261) like a pretty good deal and would eliminate the need for mailing. ---
**Author:** ![XJETGIRLX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9fc29f/32.png) [@XJETGIRLX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XJETGIRLX)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/22 "2007-02-14T17:16:09Z")
If it had to get there by the next day, and you’re in the same city why didn’t you either drop it off yourself? Seems if it was that important it would be worth going a few miles out of the way. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/23 "2007-02-14T19:21:30Z")
[QUOTE=XJETGIRLX] If it had to get there by the next day, and you’re in the same city why didn’t you either drop it off yourself? Seems if it was that important it would be worth going a few miles out of the way. [/QUOTE] Or, more simply, if it needs to be there next day then why not pay the extra $14? Also… why wait until Tuesday night to track a package that apparently needed to arrive the previous Friday? ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/24 "2007-02-14T19:24:16Z")
[QUOTE=XJETGIRLX] If it had to get there by the next day, and you’re in the same city why didn’t you either drop it off yourself? Seems if it was that important it would be worth going a few miles out of the way. [/QUOTE] That’s what I was thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Queuing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/90ced4/32.png) [@Queuing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queuing)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/25 "2007-02-14T20:21:35Z")
Much like Travel Agents, the Post Office will soon be obsolete (if it isn’t already). I, for one, can hardly wait. ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/26 "2007-02-15T01:37:41Z")
[QUOTE=Queuing] Much like Travel Agents, the Post Office will soon be obsolete (if it isn’t already). I, for one, can hardly wait. [/QUOTE] No it won’t. Small letters volume was predicted to crash mightily due to email. This was about fifteen years ago, and volumes rose significantly over the 1990s. Only now is there a slight downturn. Letters may be obsolete in the very long term (when everybody is tech-savvy [including the elderly] and are ok with e-bills etc), but strangely the internet will ensure the post office itself will survive. Somebody needs to deliver all that stuff you buy online. Until the internet gets into the teleportation game, the PO is pretty safe. Think of postal services the way you think of cinemas. Cinemas were battered and bruised by radio, then the big one - TV, and then VCRs, then the internet, then DVDs, but although its demise was predicted at every stage, you can still go out and see a movie. The industry is smaller than in its heyday, but it is still going. My personal prediction is that twenty years out, the PO will be much as it is today. Forty years from now, it might be more of a boutique business, but still there. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/27 "2007-02-15T01:52:46Z")
[QUOTE=kambuckta] How do you get a ‘tracking number’ for something that is sent via regular delivery? [/QUOTE] [Delivery Confirmation](http://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/extraservices/deliveryconfirmationservice.htm) Unfortunately, they often neglect to scan the delivery confirmation barcode. I have had several packages get delivered (I confirmed it with the recipient), yet the tracking number still said it was at the point of origin. ---
**Author:** ![dgrdfd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@dgrdfd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dgrdfd)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/28 "2007-02-15T02:57:58Z")
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**Author:** ![dgrdfd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@dgrdfd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dgrdfd)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/29 "2007-02-15T02:59:03Z")
Well, never mind actually. I thought those allowed \> 100MB file uploads. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/30 "2007-02-15T03:13:21Z")
[QUOTE=dgrdfd] Well, never mind actually. I thought those allowed \> 100MB file uploads. [/QUOTE] They do. $ 5 a month will allow up to 2 gig files. ---
**Author:** ![Queuing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/90ced4/32.png) [@Queuing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queuing)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/31 "2007-02-15T20:40:13Z")
[QUOTE=TheLoadedDog] No it won’t. Small letters volume was predicted to crash mightily due to email. This was about fifteen years ago, and volumes rose significantly over the 1990s. Only now is there a slight downturn. Letters may be obsolete in the very long term (when everybody is tech-savvy [including the elderly] and are ok with e-bills etc), but strangely the internet will ensure the post office itself will survive. Somebody needs to deliver all that stuff you buy online. Until the internet gets into the teleportation game, the PO is pretty safe. Think of postal services the way you think of cinemas. Cinemas were battered and bruised by radio, then the big one - TV, and then VCRs, then the internet, then DVDs, but although its demise was predicted at every stage, you can still go out and see a movie. The industry is smaller than in its heyday, but it is still going. My personal prediction is that twenty years out, the PO will be much as it is today. Forty years from now, it might be more of a boutique business, but still there. [/QUOTE] Maybe. You could be right. Of course things will be still have be delivered, I just see a private company doing it. Personally I get basically no wanted mail. Everything is an e-bill, and the packages I do have delivered seem to rarely , is ever, arrive by Canada Post. I do still get magazines delivered by Canada Post however. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/32 "2007-02-15T21:12:38Z")
Essentially, our NZ Post is more-or-less a private company, paying dividends to the Government, as I understand, as one of our TV free-to-air networks do. There’s some shareholder imput, but they do their own thing. There have been private alternative services that have set up, run for a bit, then fallen by the wayside – but that’s only because of the limited size of the market. One day, there won’t be anything like a state-operated postal system. It will become like our telephones, power, water etc. Contact will probably be either via agencies or the Internet, with transactions electronic and delivery systems contracted out. Well, according to my cloudy crystal ball. 😉🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2007, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144/33 "2007-02-15T21:23:51Z")
The thing about spending $14 for a delivery service is crap, however. They screw up too. We’ve all read Pit threads about some of the horror stories. My own makes a good tale – long after the fact, of course. But the USPS – someone is playing head games with us. It’s funny but a little creepy as well. You see, my GF and I live on the same street, in the same building, on the same floor – but in different apartments. The only difference in our addresses are the apartment numbers. If someone sends something to both of us, with her name listed first and her apartment number, I get it. If I’m listed first, with my apartment number, she gets it. It’s like this subtle, amusing, and inconsequential Mind Fuck. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-myself-and-the-fucking-post-office/392144.md?page=1)