In an effort to wipe out the national debt by collecting taxes sooner congress is passing a bill removing Saturday from the calendar. Republicans have determined that taking 52 days out of most years will lesson the amount of interest paid by the federal government and speed its revenue collections in a move which will dramatically reduce the federal deficit. Saturdays will not return until the federal government starts running a surplus, which pretty much means Saturdays are gone forever.
No, that isn’t exactly what happened, but I wouldn’t put it past the dimwitted upper class to propose such a debacle. They’ve run everything else into the ground, so why not the calendar as well?
Case in point. Rather than fix what is really wrong with the Postal Service, upper management, following the exact same playbook every worthless MBA in the world follows, decided to cut cut cut their way to profitability. Since it is now painfully obvious the MBAs of the world cannot beg, buy, borrow, or steal a clue, here is one they can have for free:
You cannot cut your way to growth and only growth can solve your problem.
What MBAs and the Republicans in DC are engaged in is known as the MBA death spiral. It is the belief that if revenue decreases one must cut their expenses to match revenue. It’s a vicious circle. As a business continues to cut its services it continues to cut its revenue until it eventually goes under. The code name for this in the business world is “doing more with less”. What it translates to in the real world is doing less until all that is left is management.
The Post Office has had a dramatic loss of revenue at a time when the federal government is making them do what every MBA run company on the planet is avoiding, prefunding retirement benefits. The MBAs of the world simply book that as an “unfunded liability” then leave it off all of their spreadsheets to make them look like great management.
What it appears both government and the Post Office have failed to do is diagnose why revenue has dropped so dramatically. Yes, people now send email instead of letters because it is both faster and cheaper, but, that is not the real culprit. There are two main culprits here.
- The Post Office is inaccessible.
- Junk Mail postage rate needs to be eliminated.
The first problem is a direct result of cut cut cut your way to profitability. If you want to use the Post Office, you have to either take time off work or burn your Saturday morning. I’ve had to burn a lot of Saturday mornings finding then standing in line at various Post Offices.
As both a writer and a traveling consultant I get requests for review copies of books. Most of the mailing addresses for these copies tend to be PO Boxes. The only way to ship to a PO box is via the Post Office. While I could ship at “book” rate, I tend to ship Priority mail both because it is faster and because the Post Office needs the money. I grew up in a place and time where the Post Office was my only link to the outside world. It is a link to my past I won’t give up easily.
The Post Office must fix their accessibility problem. Yes, they may need someone at the office early in the morning to deal with delivery trucks and the profitable overnight mail, but, the lobby should be closed from 9-4. It should be open from 7-9am and from 4-8pm. This allows people to use it before and after work. Lobby hours on Sunday afternoon would be awesome, though, not practical in many small communities. I find many locations are now only open 9-5. Exactly how are you supposed to get to it without taking time off work? As a result, many packages and overnight letters I would like to ship via the Post Office get shipped at whatever shipping service I can find open after work.
Bulk mail rates are a joke. Most of them were set when diesel fuel prices were below $2/gallon. Yes, the logic was that these massive shipments would be shipped at cost to keep the route trucks full, but, “at cost” isn’t reflected in those rates today. In truth, all of the bulk rates should be gone. We should have first class, Priority, overnight, and parcel rates. Even the “book” rate should be gone. It was initiated at a time when school libraries needed cheap shipping to populate their shelves, but, it has really been abused over the years.
What does the elimination of bulk mail rates mean to the average Joe and Jane? Some of your magazines will go out of print sooner rather than later. All but the best bathroom reading material is going that way as it is. Today people read magazines on-line or with an eReader device. Yes, we may keep one or two in print for bathroom trips or Sunday perusing, but seriously, how many magazines do you actually have subscriptions for anymore? I used to get about a dozen. Now I get one. In truth, I barely read half of the magazines I used to get. Some I got only because they came to me for free.
It would also mean your current Block Buster by mail subscription would go out about $5/month. If you happen to be lucky enough to have a physical Block Buster location close to you their 3-at-a-time-unlimited-exchange is a deal at $20/month and would still be a deal at $25/month. During the winter months when nothing is going on you can easily watch 6 movies per week. That equates to 24 movies per month. The by-mail portion means the stores only have to keep the newest titles in stock and you can still get those old titles you missed.
Yes, those of you still clinging to Netflix will end up having to switch to Block Buster as it goes out of business, but in my opinion that is a question of when, not if. Management has hosed that company royally and their Web site still functions like it is developed off-shore.
More importantly, what is going to be lost with the end of Saturdays? To start with, those of you who rely on that extra delivery day to get your credit card payments in on time will be forced to use on-line payment. Those of you who like to play the float, mailing the check knowing your direct deposit from work won’t hit the account until the 15th will be somewhat hosed as well.
Saturdays will also change culturally, both in cities and rural America. I know of a good many people in the rural parts of the country who wait for the mail on Saturday before going to town. Usually they run small businesses and are waiting for checks to arrive in the mail. Quite a few suburbanites and city dwellers also have a Saturday afternoon ritual of paying their bills once all of the mail has arrived for the week. Those rituals will end also. Perhaps you will start watching movies from Block Buster or spending the time at Barnes & Noble shopping for a new book, but I doubt it.
Last but not least, let us not forget all of the business customers the Post Office will lose. All of those small businesses who operate on Saturday and rely on Saturday pickups. Those items will now have to ship via alternative means. People simply aren’t willing to wait longer to get their mail.
