I want to share an experience I recently had dealing with a government option known as the Post Office.
I recently rented 2 mail boxes for a business I’m involved with. One was at my neighborhood UPS store, and the other was at my local post office. Comparing the two experiences helped me to understand why I don’t want the federal government to be in charge of my health care.
When I went to the UPS store to rent a mail box it went like this: I entered the store and was greeted by the girl who works there. I’ve been there many times and she knows my name and I know her name and she always greets me as a friend, talks to my five year old, and asks about my business. I told her that I needed to rent a box and she pulled a form out from under the counter and asked me a few questions. She filled the form out for me, took a look at my I.D., and then handed me the form to sign. I needed 2 keys for the box, which she didn’t have. She asked if I’d like to wait while she made the keys or if I’d like to pick them up on my next visit. I didn’t really need to have the keys at that moment, and there were other customers to be helped so I chose the latter. I was in an out in about five minutes.
The Post Office is an entirely different story, and unlike my visit I’ll make it brief. I went in and had to wait in a very long line. I’m in there pretty often and it’s normal. When I was called up to the counter, the postal worker looked and acted irritated to even have to deal with me. When I told him I wanted to rent a P.O. Box, he wanted to see two forms of identification, then grilled me until he was sure that I lived in the zip code and was not going to be sharing the box with anyone other than my wife. He also had to know exactly why I needed the box and what I’d be using it for.
Then he gave me a form, spent about a minute telling me how to fill it out (my name, address and phone number) and told me to fill it out and get back in line. I spent 20 seconds filling out the form and then waited in line for about seven or eight minutes until I got back to the counter. I got the same bitter looking guy.
He wanted to see my two forms of ID again and did nothing with them other than make sure they matched what I had written on the form. After charging me the fee for the box and handing me a receipt he went to get the keys.
Turns out the box he’s rented me was already rented. This prompted a 30 minute ordeal involving a partial refund via money order, then another refund for the balance that he had to call another post office to figure out how to do. Then I had a different box and he went off to get the keys. It took him longer to go back and grab my keys than my entire visit to the UPS store had lasted. I don’t know if he stopped to use the bathroom, or had lunch or what. When he was done he handed me my keys, gave a vague gesture toward where the P.O. Boxes were, and called out “NEXT!”.
No acknowledgement of the problem, no apology for having taken so long. Just “NEXT!”. He didn’t even tell me what my box number was. It was on the receipt though, so I didn’t have to bother him again. I was in the post office for about an hour to get this done. The postal worker who “helped” me was sour, surly, and didn’t seem to see me as anything more than a problem to be dealt with before moving on to the next one.
In the world of mail and package delivery, this is our “public option”. Thank God there actually are other options besides the public one.
On the delivery end of things, when I greet my postman he kind of grunts when I say “Thank you.” When there is a package delivery, the postman puts it in front of my door in plain sight of the street and walks away.
By contrast, when the UPS guy comes, he always gives a short honk as he pulls up, is friendly if I meet him at the door or the curb, and if I don’t meet him, he puts the package behind a bush where it’s not visible from the street, and he always rings the doorbell.
So when our so-called representatives in Washington talk about a “public option” for health care, I cringe because I know the post office is a public option for mail and package delivery and I know that it sucks. When they talk about a public option for health care, they don’t really want us to have any other option than the government one. Not only does the public option suck, but it’s really not optional at all.
UPDATE: Even the post office doesn’t trust mail to the post office.
