Package to mail, so off I go to the post office. When I arrived, eight people are on line ahead of me. I took my place. There were only two clerks on duty and let me tell you they were not breaking any speed records. They were moving as though through mucilage. If I had to guess, I'd say that they were working at just above the speed in which all molecular motion ceases. Their pace seemed carefully calibrated, as if in answer to the implicit question, "what's the least possible amount of energy I can expend and still retain my job?" There was some grumbling on the line: "Only two clerks on duty!" It took me twenty-five minutes but I completed my transaction. When I left, there were ten people behind me, letters or packages in hand, shuffling and stamping their collective frustrated feet.
How much time wasted? Well, here were nineteen productive citizens taking twenty minutes or half an hour to do five minutes worth of work. You do the calculation. If there had been another clerk, and if the clerks were to move at normal human speed, I would have been in and out in a flash. Multiply the TWF (time waste factor) by all the post office stations in urban America. What an astonishing, third-world loss of productivity.
The post office has been essentially privatized. It's not allowed to run a deficit, so it cuts back on services and continues to raise the cost of mailing an envelope. And makes people wait.
But it retains from its former incarnation the lifetime-employment uncivil-service mentality. It combines the worst of free enterprise with the worst of public ownership. It's a truly remarkable solution to the implicit question, can we design a completely dysfunctional bureaucracy?
About a decade ago, some idealistic postmaster-general announced a campaign to serve every customer within ten minutes of arrival. To that end, a large clock was set in a prominent spot in the every office in the land (in ours, just where the line commences). A big PR fuss was made. About a year later, all the clocks were quietly removed. I wonder, where did they go. Does the USPS maintain an old clock warehouse somewhere in central Nebraska? Or were they discarded? Or taken home by the local postmasters. In any case, the campaign was a total disaster. The system did not move.
The USPS didn't even do a good job of removing the clocks. When I stand in line, I stare at a wire sticking out of the wall where a clock used to hang. I stare at it for ten minutes, for twenty minutes, for half an hour....
Have you been to the social security office lately? Excruciating.
Posted by: Kyla | February 16, 2010 at 06:49 PM
Woe is Dr. M. We feel your pain, but have no solutions for you.
Posted by: The Real EP | February 03, 2010 at 08:51 PM