There's been much in the news recently about the dire straits of the U.S. Postal Service. They've announced they are closing locations, possibly ending Saturday delivery and most recently they said they were ending one-day first class delivery.
Well, that last one won't even be noticeable here. We haven't had one-day delivery since we moved here. A lot of days we receive no mail at all.
Case in point: one of my local clients emailed on Monday to say she just dropped a check in the mail. Three days later, it's yet to arrive. She's three miles away. I have no reason to doubt her; we've done a ton of work together and getting paid has never been an issue. In fact, the invoice she was paying isn't even technically due yet. She just thought it would be nice for me to have the money before Christmas. Which, it looks like, isn't going to happen.
And it certainly isn't an isolated incidence. My parents have sent me things that have never arrived, or if they did show up it was weeks after they were mailed. We routinely receive ad flyers touting big sales weeks after they've occurred. We just got a solicitation from a local charity asking for donations... for Thanksgiving. I've received foreclosure notices for other people, for property that isn't even remotely near here. And recently I received a magazine I had forgotten I subscribed to because we hadn't received an issue in almost a year.
I'm not sure where the fault lies, either with the local operation or our particular mail carrier, who I'm pretty sure drinks. Heavily. Probably a fatal combination of both.
At any rate, when the Post Office finally goes bust, we'll be well prepared for it here in Bako. For all intents and purposes, it already has.
