What's That Sound? OH! That's the Sound of the Post Office Sucking Ass!

Back in December I posted about some marketing and some stories I sent to This American Life. Well the marketing was barely successful if at all, and This American Life told me I sucked total ass, but neither of those things are what this is about.

Within that post I talked about this infuriating new machine the post office is trying to force us to use called the Automated Postal Center.

I would indeed use this machine. It does MANY of the things I would normally have to wait too fucking long in line at my post office for and it is simple to use. One little problem...it only takes credit or debit cards.

How stupid do you have to be? I know debit cards are like using cash, but I just hate using them. As for credit cards, I really don't see putting postage on my credit card as any smart way to spend money. How hard would it really be to have this machine take cash?

We get dinged with postage increases often and we are always told it is to vastly improve the service we receive. Well, they won't spend the revenue on more people at my postal counter because that would involve adding payroll and benefits, if not actually make my trip to the post office less painful. They won't get the workers they've already got to do their work any faster or more efficiently because they wouldn't be able to justify more increases in postage. So they came up with a rather good idea executed rather poorly!

My local post office, the 3rd largest post office east of the Rocky Mountains, is among the absolute WORST in service. There is almost ALWAYS a long line at the counter, even at 2:00 PM on a Wednesday afternoon in April, and there are never any people at the counter to take care of me.

This office used to have a vending machine in the lobby that dispensed stamps in every conceivable denomination as well as gave cash back for change. I loved this machine because I could get my priority postage and so on without the hassle of the lines. There was also a machine that just had single ounce and additional ounce denominations inside. They removed the good machine to make room for the automated crap and left the completely inconvenient machine behind. So now when I'm there I have to suffer through their incompetence in order to get the postage I need. I will not be using their automated piece of crap, even out of spite!

Apparently, nobody else wants to use this thing because the lines are longer than ever and every so often there's some chick trying to encourage people to use the machine, offering to give instructions on how it can make our lives easier. Whenever I see her and she approaches me I always ask if the machine takes cash. When she says,"No," I give her a rather smug grin and an earful about how I'd rather stand in line and complain to the counter person about how this post office sucks much ass.

There was no photo available of the machine before and now the post office is so proud of this machine nobody wants to use they have post cards in the lobby announcing it's arrival. I felt it necessary to share it with you.