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Post by gocav76 on Sept 9, 2007 23:44:53 GMT -5
I'm working for the U.S. Postal Service at a mail processing plant. All the mail that is undeliverable is sold to a contractor for pulp. You have no idea how many new books are left outside in the weather to be hauled away! It seems such a waste! I'm sad every time I walk by the bins full of great reading material-never to be read!
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Post by crzhrs on Sept 10, 2007 12:54:22 GMT -5
Can you legally go through the books or are they off limits?
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kenny
Full Member
Posts: 156
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Post by kenny on Sept 10, 2007 13:11:57 GMT -5
It just isn't only books that are lost. There are other stuff that are destroy. Anyway I thought the the post office sold the unclaim items them self. Will I guest I wrong about that.
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Post by Scout on Sept 10, 2007 13:29:23 GMT -5
kenny, I'm not surprised. I have a book on the Civil War parks and in the 1920's and 30's hundreds of gun carriages, cannons were ordered destroyed by the government and were. The government didn't seem to have it in their budget for any storage and labeled them as unwanted surplus and ordered them burned. They refused to sell them to any private parties. Hundreds of weapons were destroyed. I hate to say it but the government has never been known for anything resembling basic intelligence. I worked in the postal dept. for awhile. Dumb people are promoted to the top.
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Post by harpskiddie on Sept 10, 2007 16:24:38 GMT -5
I worked over the Christmas Holidays one year at the Undeliverable Mail Office in Toronto. Most of it was, of course, letters to Santa - which went straight into the heating system. After sorting out however many bags of mail there were that day, usually from 10 to 15, running each of the items through a date-stamping machine , I handled maybe 250,000 items a day, sorting them into destinations by address.
Each of these destinations was further broken down by others into those with a return address, and those without. The return addresses were sent back. Those without, if they seemed important, i.e. not obviously advertising or lottery ticket sales material, were opened by inspectors to see if any return information might be on the inside.
After a few days, I became reasonably adept at finishing my assigned work, and volunteered to the supervisor for additional duties [thinking I would extend my temporary job for a week or so - I was making good money. I was hardly popular with the other employees in the UMO, since I turned out about 4 times their average work. I was kept on for an additional week, at the end of which the manager said he could bypass the civil service exam requirement, and get me hired on full time.
I looked around me at the rest of the employees, and thought about the offer for perhaps a nanosecond and said: "Are you completely out of your....mind?!?!?!?"
Whenever somebody "goes postal," I think about those well-paid but poor people working in that robotic environment. I can only hope that things have changed, but it is the gummint after all, and there ain't much difference between Canada and the USA,
Gordie,
hey kid!! you tryin' to make us look bad? slow down ferchrissakes..................................
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Post by Treasuredude on Sept 10, 2007 19:51:35 GMT -5
I worked over the Christmas Holidays one year at the Undeliverable Mail Office in Toronto. Most of it was, of course, letters to Santa - which went straight into the heating system. OK. Now I know why I never get what I really want for Christmas. Thanks for nothing. I've got another idea. Dear Easter Bunny...... |
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Post by gocav76 on Sept 10, 2007 19:57:51 GMT -5
Thanks everyone for the comments. CRZHRS, Sad to say that no-one is allowed to sort through the stuff-it is monitored 24/7 by video cam and a person would face Federal charges for stealing governmemt property! Today I saw a thick volume on Robert E Lee, Battle of Shiloh, and Trail of Tears book, all sitting outside waiting for the rain! Kenny, You are correct other things are destroyed-you should see all the music CD"s. Which brings me to Gordie--sounds like you know the system very well! Scout-I agree with you, it just blows my mind to see such waste! Do they not realize that they could have book sales on the parking lot and earn the government some cash! Larry
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Post by "Hunk" Papa on Sept 11, 2007 11:13:27 GMT -5
Scout, the Peter principle applies to all hierarchical businesses, so it is not surprising that your Postal Service is no exception. Is that not also the case with the LBHA BOD, with the added factor that reaching your dotage is a required qualification?
Hunk
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Post by harpskiddie on Sept 11, 2007 11:49:33 GMT -5
Apropos of destroyed books.
When I was first in the retail book trade, publishers' returns [everything is/was really on consignment as it were] consisted of packing up and shipping the returned books. Apparently this proved to be a big problem for either the publishers or some retailers, or possibly both, and the publishers changed their policies so that only the front cover of paperbacks was to be returned. I suppose that this also saved shipping costs for the retailers.
Anyway, as part of this new procedure, and for fairly obvious reasons, the booksellers were forbidden from disposing of the coverless books except by tossing them in the garbage. We were too dependent on the goodwill of our suppliers [we needed the "net 30 days"] to try to donate these "returns" to anyone or to give them away by putting them in a barrel out in front of the store, which was my first response. So we tried selling the books at cost before condemning them to be returned, thereby saving some customers some money and giving some people a chance to get a book they may have wanted but couldn't afford [we normally rotated 15% discounts weekly to different sections of our store - Mystery, SF, Psychology etc. and had standing deeper discounts on selected groups, like Louis Lamour and Sierra Club Books].
It would have cost the publishers next to nothing to allow the booksellers to donate these coverless books to a charity or to the Salvation Army Thrift Stores or schools or whatever, and would have generated enormous goodwill for the suppliers.
I never could bring myself to throw the books in the garbage, nor could my partner, so we made our part timer handle that onerous task. As far as I know, the practice continues.
As Hunk says, in a hierarchy, a person tends to rise to his level of incompetence [the Peter Principle]. Governments tend to be the largest hierarchies extant, but the principle applies to all corporations [and non-profits] as well.
Gordie,
I stood and waited where the rivers run - it felt so good to feel the morning sun...................
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Post by crzhrs on Sept 12, 2007 10:46:47 GMT -5
Hasn't anyone heard of postal employees reading many magazines, etc. that are delivered to customers.
Our small town PO is notorious for that. Somehow a few of my magazines, newspapers, etc. always seem to have been gone through. Dog-eared pages, missing inserts, coupons, etc.
That doesn't begin to account for mail delivery that could be from anytime between 2-6 p.m.!
And of course we are always getting someone else's mail . . . who knows where ours ends up!
Ah . . . through wind and snow and sleet and rain . . .
Yeah, right!
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Post by Diane Merkel on Sept 12, 2007 20:06:57 GMT -5
It's really easy to criticize them -- and I've done it many times -- but something happened not too long ago that restored my faith in both the USPS and UPS.
I ordered something online a few months ago. It appeared they would deliver to my post office box, so that's the address I used and, of course, they shipped it via UPS. The UPS pick-up office is about an hour away from here, and I've had to go there before. This time, some wonderful unknown UPS guy apparently went into the post office and asked for my street address. Whoever was behind the counter didn't know it, but he/she did know my mother (not sure how because we have different last names and live in different towns) and my package was delivered to her address.
None of that was probably kosher, but they saved me a two-hour drive. Now, when I'm standing in line as they move more slowly than snails, I just grin and bear it.
Crazy, you must get more exciting magazines than I do because I've never noticed anything used or abused.
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Post by Treasuredude on Sept 12, 2007 21:00:44 GMT -5
When I was in college, my Mom sent me a package. It was delivered to my apartment while I was away. When I got home there was a note on my door that read, "I hid your package behind the dryer -- UPS". Luckily, none of the would be thieves in my building could read.
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Post by bradandlaurie on Sept 13, 2007 6:40:43 GMT -5
I guess I'm just lucky. I order a huge number of books on the web and have them shipped directly to my work address. When I'm not at work they hold them in the office mailroom or, if seem valuable, the woman who handles the mail delivers them directly to my office. I've never had a problem with the postal service.
The only odd thing is that my boss did remark one time that I get more mail, in terms of weight, than the rest of the building combined. I guess that as long as the company loves me they will just ignore their eccentric employee...
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Post by crzhrs on Sept 13, 2007 12:10:54 GMT -5
Maybe I was exaggerating just a bit . . . but we live in a small town with rural route carriers using their own vehicles to deliver mail.
But yes, we do get other people's mail at times . . . and we sometimes don't get the mail at the "usual" time . . . and if it's a storm . . . well maybe tomorrow we'll get the mail.
All-in-all it's OK . . . I just wish they would stop raising the cost of stamps! The higher the cost of stamps the better the service!
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Post by harpskiddie on Sept 13, 2007 17:29:26 GMT -5
We have this thing in Canada called a permanent stamp. It bears the denomination "P" - and whatever the letter rate happens to be in future, the P stamp will cover it.
Gordie,
what will they think of next?.......................................
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