One of the last steps in our household move is to make sure that our mail is forwarded to our new address. To that end, on Tuesday I instructed our local post office -- in writing, in person -- of the change.Late yesterday I discovered that the USPS is doing precisely the opposite of what I asked it to do. It's taking all mail destined for our new address and forwarding it to our old address.
I trotted down to the post office first thing this morning and spoke with the supervisor, who dug out our change-of-address forms -- and sure enough, it was the post office's foulup, not mine. He promised to reverse the reversal immediately.
And if you're rolling your eyes at that tale of incompetence, consider this: Even though our mail is to be forwarded to an address in the same ZIP (within the same building, that is), it first has to be flagged, loaded onto a tractor-trailer and trucked 15 miles into Columbus, where yellow forwarding stickers will be affixed. Then it'll get trucked 15 miles back to the local post office, from which it'll be delivered to us.
Essentially, our mail will take two or three days to travel less than twenty feet.
With that kind of gross inefficiency, it's no wonder that the USPS is in dire straits.
