I stumbled across this article this morning on CNN - Say goodbye to Saturday mail? The columnist gives a little history how Post Office delivery worked from the time it was created, and apparently there was too much of a public outcry to cut delivery on Saturdays ... back when Eisenhower was the President. Even though the Postal Service is leaking money like a sieve and regular stamps are now up to 45 cents a pop, we're still apparently using polling data from 1957 in support of continuing Saturday delivery of the mail.
Here's the fun part. With everything going on in the world with economic crises all over the place, health care about to undergo a major change of some kind, people not being able to find jobs for months and months at a time ... the ending of Saturday delivery of the mail is a "jarring potential change in the nation's social fabric." And "the texture of the nation's life will be altered, probably forever."
Are you kidding me? A jarring potential change in our nation's social fabric to stop delivering mail to people's homes on Saturday? Because man, the gay marriage fight and the unemployment rate aren't jarring enough, are they. I was unaware that the texture of our nation's life was dependent upon the postal carrier appearing on my block on a Saturday morning, because Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday just aren't enough.
Yes! Say goodbye to mail delivery on Saturdays! Immediately! Quit bleeding money to rush my advertisements and credit card offers to me on Saturday, and save it for Monday. Cut the mail delivery to homes to 4 days a week, for all I care. (Businesses can keep their Friday deliveries.) Give the postal workers a full weekend, for crying out loud, instead of making them work 6 days a week like, oh, no one else in the entire country. I apparently need to write to my Congressional delegation to encourage this, because Congress has to okay it.
(And here is Candidate 3 for Stupid Quote of the Year.)
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3 opinions:
If we were talking about the Sunday comics no longer showing up on my doorstep, then we could wax nostalgic. There's some romance to sitting down with that weekly pleasure.
But I don't think too many people have timed all their beautiful personal correspondence to be delivered on Saturday such that we all wait in eager anticipation for that moment. At least, not in any household I've seen.
He's probably right that we don't know what we have until we lose it, but sometimes loss is a good thing. We learn the things we can live without (or have left behind).
Wait! What? The mail is delivered on Saturdays? All this time I thought we just picked up what we forgot to get on Friday.
Mail carriers don't work six days a week. They have other people who do it on the weekends. So honestly, I don't feel that bad for them. Especially mine who can't get our mail straight to save her life.
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