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Part 100 Civil Service:
April 26, 2004:
In my recent essays, I discusses some of the aspects of law and law enforcement. I could keep banging on points of law forever. Some people make a career out of things like that, but it is not my intention. I am trying to lay out a philosophy. In this piece I want to discuss some other aspects of government and human behavior. In particular I want to discuss indolent people (free loaders, bums, or whatever). More particularly I want to discuss these people as they effect the honesty and efficiency of our government. for that, I have some prime examples out of my personal experience. In government and in industry there is an enormous cost associated with this problem.
In my essay number 76 I said restoring the rule of law is only part of the issue. Our law is, as it should be, very closely tied to our ethics and our integrity. As a result, we cannot take it in isolation. We must look at our ethics and our integrity. Perhaps the problem would be better stated as, we must look at our growing lack of ethics and integrity. Now it is time to look directly at that paucity of personal ethics in civil service and the behavior resulting from that.
In that, I find no better place to begin than the Untied States Postal Service. Therein is where a great deal of my personal experience lies. My experience is as an outsider suffering the effects of what I perceive as indolence. In one sense this piece could have been titled "Changing Perceptions." It is surprising how my perception of things have changed over time and how uncomfortable and embarrassing it is to realize how wrong I was.
All of my life, I have heard complains about the postoffice from many people. When all of those others were complaining I was another one of those fools who was blinded to it because it was not happening to me. In fact, here is a paragraph from a previous essay I wrote about the postoffice. It is a good indication of how blind a person can become when they are not the victim of the problem.
Well, I want to go on record now to say, "The United States Post Office is outstanding." They deliver on time and the price is remarkably low. Just a few cents to send a very private communication anywhere in the country. Call it snail mail if you like but it always gets through and no one but the recipient reads it. If someone else has read it, the evidence will be clear. So go ahead. Snort and chortle about your e-mail and call the US Mail snail mail but, while you're about it, don't put anything in e-mail that you wouldn't shout out loud in prime time on network television.
Now I was right about e-mail, but I must admit I was very wrong about these postal service people. I have no excuse for this. There were strong indications all along. The problem was not isolated. There was great discontent throughout the postal system. Postmen actually got guns and shot up the place. That should have been a clue. It happened too many times. Those incidents along with so many people complaining, including my neighbors, should have told me something was radically wrong in the postoffice.
We'll, the crap finally got through and affected me. Until then, as I said, I had no personal experience of the problem. My wife and I have lived at this same location since 1959. That's almost 45 years. In all that time we never had a problem with our mail until the last two or three years. Even then, I first thought it was just a fluke. Now I know it was not a fluke. Though the problems began just recently, they got very bad very quickly.
Our home is on what is called a rural route. That means our mail got put in a mailbox mounted on a post at the road. We had to go to the road to get it. Even so, up until now, our mail always got through and I was satisfied with the postal service. In truth, there was an occasionally time or two, in some really bad winters, when the mail was delayed for a day, but only a day. It was always delivered the next day. When we first moved here, I believe the mail carriers took their responsibilities seriously. They really took their creed to heart. Snow and rain and all that stuff. They expected and were equipped to deal with Michigan winters. That was then. Now things have changed.
Our first indication of trouble came when we discovered someone was opening our mailbox before we got to it. The door was left open and some key mail came up missing. My wife went to the postoffice to report a case of mail tampering and get some help. That was when we discovered they just don't give a damn, about mail tampering or anything else. I posted an essay about this called "Crooks and Bureaucrats" in the Forum archive. Please read it for a more complete story. I'll just give the pertinent details here.
One would think the post office would be concerned about mail tampering. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like all bureaucracies they just do not give a damn. They want to do business as usual. They will not countenance disruptions or distractions from their routine. These things distress them so much they deal with them by refusing to acknowledge them. These people are human automatons in the worst sense of the word.
So here was the United States Postal Service telling us that mail tampering was not their business. Someone tampering with our mail was not their problem, it was our problem. In addition, they would not let us pick up our mail each day for the short term while we redirected our important mail to a PO box. Our option was to put it on hold for a time, pick up the mail at the end of that time, then make out a new hold order. The minimum time was three days. That is how their bureaucracy works, no exceptions! They did not treat us like neighbors. They treated us like adversaries.
We got thorough that problem by redirecting our key mail to a postoffice box. It took several stress filled days. We had to rush because we are aware of the identity theft problem. We knew what mail tampering might imply. If I had known what was about to happen next, I would have completed the task and redirected all of our mail at once. Instead, I only moved the personal information mail.
A very short time later the other shoe fell. I had to send this e-mail to all of our friends and family.
Dear Family and Friends:
We were surprised and angered when the United States Postoffice,
in its infinite wisdom, refused to deliver mail to our home. However,
there was not a great deal we could do about it. In order to continue
receiving our mail, we were forced to change our mailing address
to a post office box.
In case you need to correspond by mail, our new address is:
Willie and Nancy Gaffer
P. O. Box ****
Ortonville, MI ************
Thanks much:
Willie and Nancy:
What happened is our letter carrier decided she did not have to deliver our mail. She did put a condition on that. If I was to shovel the snow off of about 100 feet of the road in front of our mailbox to her satisfaction she would resume delivery. This apparently is a postal regulation. She does not have to do her job if she finds too much snow for her. She can demand, as a condition of doing her job, that a 73 year old arthritic man do what the Oakland County road commission did not do to her satisfaction. The road commission did clear the road, but she was not happy with the way they did it.
From her notice that she put in our mailbox, it was not clear what she intended to do with the mail she refused to deliver. It was very clear that we would not be allowed to pick it up at the postoffice. From reading the notice, I got that she was just going to trash our mail. I'm not sure if she could legally do that, but I did not know she could legally refuse to do her job either. I took no chances and immediately filed a change of address form with our wonderful neighbors at the postoffice. Now we are going through the chore of notifying everyone who sends mail to us about the change.
I don't know when this alleged regulation came about. These lazy bums will cite postal regulations as though they were carved in stone at the same time as the ten commandments. I suspect most of these dishonest regulations were written in the last ten years by people like our ex-letter carrier for people like her. These are indolent people who have oozed into the system then oozed into positions of power. We all should be so lucky. She does not have to do her job, but she is still getting paid as though she were doing it.
All it takes in civil service is time. Wait long enough and
you will come to power.
So far as I know, this postoffice problem has all come about within
the last few years. That is when that woman took over the delivery
of our mail. I suspect it was just a few years before that when
the dishonest postal regulations began to get codified by the
lazy indolent people who had oozed into the system. I believe
it is at least partly about the lowering of standards. I will
get more into that in my next essay in which I will be a bit less
personal. For now, I am left to wonder what will happen when the
postoffice runs out of PO boxes. That will happen very soon as
more and more people chose not to deal with otiose letter carriers.
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