Could your post office be closing?

LOL, this should have been done A LONG TIME AGO- within 4 miles of me there are THREE post offices. Maybe the old days of putting the mail in the box across the road for the mail man/woman to pick up should come back?

 

Ours is closed so much of the day. Open 2 hours in morn and 2 in the afternoon. They take a long lunch.

Most of the time I drive 8 miles away to another town that has regular hours.

 

The one where I work has been on the hit list a couple of times now, but somehow manages to survive (knock on wood!). We're in a small village several miles from town, and because there are limited hours and no delivery -- just PO boxes -- the post office has become the heart of our community.

What's interesting is that people from neighboring towns will drive out to our post office for service. Seems they don't like the ho-hum attitude of the employees in the town facilities, and prefer coming to a place where people get to know your name. Yeah, you might wait in line a few minutes, but that's when you catch up on all the local news!

 

Hmmmm Now it all makes sense

2 of our local postal workers bought new cars this year. BOTH have had for sale signs on them, the past 2 months.

Maybe the gravy train is about to quite running in my home town.

 

I've learned the hard way, that some of the post offices around here are now closed on saturday. The one I normally go to has started closing an hour earlier during the week. And, they have taken out all of the stamp vending machines.
Great! Just great! Now, I have to make a special trip just to buy a stamp.

 

Welcome to my world...for the past 30 years.

Our post office has always been "open" on Saturdays until noon. But....

You weren't/aren't allowed into the section where the counters were. IE If it didn't fit in a letter slot, it wasn't being sent. They would all wave at you through the glass doors, and smile when you grabbed the handle and gave it pull.

 

Quick Trip sells stamps, or did last time I was in one. I'm tired of the post office failing. I sent a guy a money order for something, he was in OH, I was in MO. 6 weeks later, he still hadn't got it. I set up a paypal account and paid that way. A week and a half later, the money order finally showed up. He mailed it back to me, the envelope it was in was postmarked 7 weeks after I'd sent it.

Not worth using the US Mail.

I also saw a mail semi yesterday in St Louis on 270 with the rear roll up door smashed and bulging out from the wall of packages that fell over and almost went right out the back.

 

The post office I usually go to, is a major mail hub. All of the mail tractor-trailers deliver here, and is then reloaded onto smaller tractor-trailers or box trucks, and delivered to the post offices in the central Arkansas area. This post office is open until midnight on tax day. It was open until noon on saturdays, like all other post offices were.
I've been to stores that had signs posted stating they sell stamps. If they actually had them, it was not convenient for me as a customer to purchase. "Go to the customer service desk," they would say. "Are you telling me to get in that line over there with the other 50 people wanting refunds?"
Yeah, their customer satisfaction has obviously dropped. Since I am in a rural area, the 'contract' carriers don't really put a lot of focus on making sure they put the mail in the correct mailbox. It has caused me great stress, waiting on mail that was very important.

 

A few years back, I saw a mail contractor run off the highway. It was a 4 lane, divided U.S. highway, with a concrete wall between north and south bound sides. I was tagging along behind another big truck, when he suddenly braked. I slowed trying to see what was in front of him to cause him to slow.
Wasn't on our side at all, I noticed a truck come back up onto the highway. Guess he dozed off, went down almost into a lake, and managed to get it back up on the pavement.
Yeah, I couldn't see the truck. The top of the truck was below my sight line, caused by the divider wall. Until he popped back up on the highway.