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I'm a big fan of the Postal Service, and frankly i don't give a damn whether or not they make money or lose money. I don't want my regular mail handled by UPS or Fedex....or some other private company. I'll use them when i need them.
You will still be able to use the USPS. It will be more limited as far as locations and days and in some cases/instances, certain services. But yes. If you want to, you can still stand on line at the PO to send your electric bill and buy stamps. It isn't the USPS Armageddon or anything. You will not be able to go on certain days or at certain times. But unless your local PO somehow was a 24/7 live-person service building up until now, you've never known a PO that you could walk into whenever you wanted...right?
If you want to send mail and get mail, you'll still be able to send mail and get mail.
Until recently there was an emotional warm place for the displaced victims of progress. An employer who innovated production felt a certain amount of responsibility to the displaced workers. Unions helped. Remember push button elevator operators? Now you are left to it. Worse, people are angry with you for having chosen a vocation that was subject to innovation. That is unprecedented in man's history. Well... its unprecedented in a First World nation with pretensions to a social conscience. No one who has a job right now is going to be much interested in jumping ship to a competitor. Hmmmm... come work for us... you work a 35 hour week now... we'll raise that to 50. You get 5 weeks vacation? Oh we can do better than that, we'll start you with 2. What do you make now, we'll give you 2/3 of that when can you start? Is it me or is there something a little hollow about those job offers. Where I used to work we'd post those offers because we had to but there was no job on offer. Thing is, people kept taking them seriously and sending in resumes. Hundreds of them. I think they've found a way around that little issue... ...
Oh dear God. Times change, people, and that's nothing new.
Cranky old men have, since the dawn of time, been talking about how horrid all that new-fangled technology is (was) and how it is (was) going to be the downfall of civilization.
"WTH? The WHEEL? Four wheels instead of four men's backs to carry goods on. Imagine the jobs that's gonna kill. I say we go backward!"
It's true that there's a job loss situation in this country, I'm not downplaying it. However, in parting I'd like to point out the irony of cranky people whining, via the internet, about how technology is causing families to starve to death due to obvious potential post office closings.
Support your local PO if you're so loyal; write a letter about it to your cranky friends instead of tapping away endlessly about it. Otherwise, technology happens, people, and has been happening, as far as we can tell, for approximately the past 2.75 million years.
Until recently there was an emotional warm place for the displaced victims of progress. An employer who innovated production felt a certain amount of responsibility to the displaced workers. Unions helped. Remember push button elevator operators? Now you are left to it. Worse, people are angry with you for having chosen a vocation that was subject to innovation.
That's not true. Who's angry at you? Yes, your job is being nudged out. EVERY job is eventually nudged out; even those elevator button pushers were nudged out.
It wasn't a warm and fuzzy position made just for them, it was an unnecessary extra that certain buildings were willing to pay for in order to look like big cheeses (is "cheeses" actually correct grammar?). And it got outmoded eventually, though probably not everywhere. There must be an elevator button-pusher somewhere.
We still hire people for unnecessary things and then phase them out. I'm not sure post office jobs compare as the post office hasn't been an unnecessary frivolity. But honestly, I can't imagine who you mean when you say people are angry at you for having wanted to work for the PO.
And how is a "well, we just don't need this service any more" cavalier attitude toward lost jobs "unprecedented"? You don't think that button pusher, when he was 17 years old in 39, was shrugging at the dude who, until elevators were invented, used to be employed as the guy who hauled all the shopping boxes up flights of steps for people? You don't think the elevator guy was saying, "So sorry about your job, fellow, but times change and in fact if they didn't...I could never have had this sweet gig as a button pusher -- you need to change with the times, the times won't stand still just so you can still get paid to haul shopping boxes up steps"?
I used to be able to secure work anywhere as an administrative assistant if all else failed; today, my old standby has basically been outmoded. (Who needs shorthand any more? OMG. Do most people even know what shorthand even was? Who needs a real person to answer the phone? FAR fewer business than ever. Who needs physical papers filed all day if they don't exist? etc.) So I have to do something different instead. Life goes on.
Nobody's mad at me...and anyway, I like writing and editing better. Some day that will be outmoded too. I'll either be dead by then, retired (somehow) or will do something different.
The tea baggers railing against the evil communism of the USPS is the bestest kind of irony, since teabaggers and republicans tend to come from the places that get the most benefit from it being socialized.
Millions of pounds of mail goes from, say, NY to LA, in massive bulk flights. Very little mail goes to Hogswallow, Kentucky. The cost per parcel for delivery to small towns is astronomical compared to major cities.
But don't bother to tell them that. No matter what, it's still evil kenyan muslim communism nazi Obama socializing our freedoms to Soviet Hitlerstan.
I'm a big fan of the Postal Service, and frankly i don't give a damn whether or not they make money or lose money. I don't want my regular mail handled by UPS or Fedex....or some other private company. I'll use them when i need them.
I agree. I do a lot of eBay sales and I'd be lost without the post office. They've really made it easy for eBayers.
Do you think they should keep the post offices open, even if they are losing millions of $$ because it will increase unemployment? Of course we are all aware of this and it is a sad part of progress but what is the solution?
OMG, how did you know???? Well, we weren't Little House on the Prairie, exactly...we had running water and 'lectricity and eveything. But it was a very small town and it was the 70s and 80s. A lot has changed and that's okay. Things are supposed to change. Our species is all about adaptation and change, and that is perhaps the one thing that *won't* be changing any time soon.
It's not such a tragedy as we may think.
"adaptation and change"?! Have you seen some of the posters on these here fine forums?!! The postal service in it's historic format is indeed a bit of a fossil, (can't last a day without my Dish Network HD, only available if I agree to paperless online billing). The old days are just that. Sad as it may be, progress (I guess) will not soon stop. The postal service may well be just another victim in the ongoing high-tech "upgrade" to our lives.
Never knew you were from Walnut Grove. Did Merlin Olson actually play football, or did he just work in the sawmill with Chuck?
"adaptation and change"?! Have you seen some of the posters on these here fine forums?!! The postal service in it's historic format is indeed a bit of a fossil, (can't last a day without my Dish Network HD, only available if I agree to paperless online billing). The old days are just that. Sad as it may be, progress (I guess) will not soon stop. The postal service may well be just another victim in the ongoing high-tech "upgrade" to our lives.
Never knew you were from Walnut Grove. Did Merlin Olson actually play football, or did he just work in the sawmill with Chuck?
Actually...when I was growing up, it wasn't quite named Walnut Grove yet and football was played with a rock. Good to see ha, dookieboy. (waving)
Actually...when I was growing up, it wasn't quite named Walnut Grove yet and football was played with a rock. Good to see ha, dookieboy. (waving)
Back atchya jerz. Did you ever get the back 40 tilled?
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You will not be able to go on certain days or at certain times. But unless your local PO somehow was a 24/7 live-person service building up until now, you've never known a PO that you could walk into whenever you wanted...right?
Some day that will be outmoded too. I'll either be dead by then, retired (somehow) or will do something different.
