Pardon my language, but shit just got real at the USPS. What with the scythe swiped through personnel nationwide at the new Head there, things are about to get very very second- or third-world.
How bad? The new Czar over there just decreed zero overtime. Zero. For any reason. Not permitted, not approved.
My nephew works for the USPS in a large city in the southwest that will remain nameless because paranoia. He said they’ve just rented a tremendous warehouse. Why? To store the endless trailers of overflow mail as yet unsorted and undelivered in that city.
That’s how bad things are. And they’re only headed down. This IS political, and it’s specious to discuss this without recognizing this fact.
Of course, if they had hired more people less overtime might have been needed…
And after decreeing zero overtime no doubt the new Postal Inquisitor will be slashing personnel, again as a “cost saving” measure. Eventually, he’ll get to a point where the only way to save more money would be to eliminate the service entirely.
After which we’ll all be forced to use much more expensive private delivery services, IF they service our area at all - if they don’t, sucks to be you. That is the plan.
90% of the stuff I get is pre-sort marketing email, I normally get at least a couple of pieces a day. That’s basically stopped the last week, I think there were 3 or 4 days last week I had no mail.
Still getting first class mail, discounted postal rate financial statements, stuff like meds where USPS is last mile, and magazines on time, but that only amounts to ten or so pieces a month.
So, important stuff, not a problem yet. Junk mail oh yeah, it’s piling up somewhere.
The boss was waiting on a package and tracked it. She got something that said “Driveway/front door inaccessible” or similar. We were sitting on our front porch all day and that simply wasn’t true. She got our regular carrier the next day and he told her that they had a certain amount of time to deliver packages and if they were running short on time, they simply punched something in that covered their butts. Seems possible.
That’s pretty much the same thing I got from our local Post Office when I called them* about a package which was supposedly delivered. The package showed up the following day.
SF Bay Area here. We’re getting mail but it has been pretty light for the past several weeks. Normally we get a lot of junk mail (as noted up-thread) but not so much now. First class letters from relatives and financial statements are coming through ok. Also, packages seem to be getting delivered in a timely manner.
Junk mail is pretty much mostly gone now, most companies see no point in sending fliers for cruises or expensive tacky collectibles in the current economy.
First class and packages however are coming in very strong, they started reassigning people who use to sort letters to now go help sort packaged since letters are super light.
FWIW, I’m expecting two packages of things I ordered via Amazon: one sent USPS and one from Amazon themselves. USPS somehow expects theirs to be delivered by 8 tonight even though tracking shows it’s still on the wrong side of the country!
FWIW, the Albuquerque, NM system has lost three letters of mine and two parcels (both media mail), all within the past six months. I have tracking numbers for the two parcels I sent, both of which have gone MIA; when I submitted them through the online page for “Search for my parcel,” I received several ‘updates’ and then finally a “Your search has expired” (this week). Two of the letters I sent were mail-in check payments, and the other one was a personal letter.
This is not the first time the ABQ office has lost packages of mine–I was supposed to receive a hiring package once, with personally identifying information in the paperwork which was confirmed by the Postal Inspectors as stolen and “destroyed.” If I understand correctly, ABQ is the central hub for all mail in New Mexico. Letters sent from my own town here, to me, bounce from my local Post Office, down to ABQ for processing, and then come back up, based on the postmark/cancellations.
@Asuka, you have a thankless job, keeping us all moving, and I thank you! Please keep on truckin’, despite all of the shenanigans with top leadership.