Comments on: You think the postal service is bad now?

By: texexec

texexec — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:13:51 +0000

Things really have changed a LOT with communications. And that has affected many things.

I remember having to write my broker (in NYC) letters from Aruba (where I was performing my Navy duty), telling him which stocks to buy. The letters often arrived at his desk after a couple of weeks.

Nowadays, I do that with a couple of clicks of my mouse…and sometimes hold the position for 30 seconds or less. And I can do that from almost anywhere in the world.

By: EssEm

EssEm — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:57:09 +0000

I live in San Francisco. Left my cell phone at a local restaurant. When I got home, I found an email from my sister in New York City, telling me she’d had a phone call from my mother on Eastern Long Island, that a woman with an Australian accent had found my phone in the restaurant and called to say she was leaving it with the owner. I drove back and picked it up…

By: Terry Hoover

Terry Hoover — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:45:49 +0000

Sgt. Mom speaks of change in the 19th century, and how fast is was and the effect it had on peoples’ lives. In the 20th century my grandmother used to go to school in a buggy behind a horse. She lived long enough to sit in her own living room and watch men walking on the moon. Her husband, my grand father, might have had similar experiences, but the horses he knew as a child were draught animals…his family couldn’t afford the luxury of taking a buggy to school.

By: blert

blert — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:52:01 +0000

It didn’t get solved until packet shipping circa 1853…

Packet ships left on a set date full or not. They got the nic because their definite departure date hoovered up ALL of the packet/ letter business.

They were the original Fed Ex. And yes, they used steam & sail.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:04:08 +0000

Motorcyclist: so much of a cultural tradition that there's this.

By: Motorcyclist

Motorcyclist — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:41:07 +0000

I have no doubt that postal service will revert to the mean over the next few years. Government run agencies are all going to become snarling, inefficient, predatory version of their current selves.

Still, you have to admit that postal workers still provide entertaining news! How about the one that was caught on camera, defecating in a postal customers’ front yard? Going postal is almost a cultural tradition now!

By: Lee Merrick

Lee Merrick — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:34:47 +0000

It’s not that the USPS is bad, it’s irrelevant. The only “mail” we receive is junk with an occasionnal medical bill. Everything that is important is online. The fact that we have Saturday delivery is ridiculous. It should be cut back to twice-weekly.

By: expat

expat — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 06:17:28 +0000

I read Bill Bryson’s At Home a few weeks ago. It is full of similar stories. It’s a fun (mostly), easy read.

By: david foster

david foster — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 01:47:50 +0000

As Sgt Mom says, the telegraph had a huge impact. One journalist marveled “This extraordinary discovery leaves…no elsewhere…it is all HERE.”

The railroad, too, had a great effect on the perception of space and time. Heinrich Heine, living in Paris in 1843, wrote “I feel the mountains and forests of all countries advancing towards Paris. Already, I smell the scent of German lime-trees; the North-Sea breaks on my doorstep.”

By: DaveindeSwamp

DaveindeSwamp — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:41:29 +0000

rickl,no, you are on the receiving end of a new anti-terror policy. I purchase items from Europe regularly and sometimes it’s 5 days, sometimes it’s 60.