Yeah, that title is a tough one right now. But I suppose it’s true. It’s not that I love the country right now, but I love what the country can be. Things change, things get worse, but there are still bright spots to focus on.
Anyway, remember a while ago when it was really fashionable to protest something by supporting a business? Well, that wasn’t really it, but remember when a bunch of people did a bunch of virtue signaling by making a particular business really profitable? Weird? Yeah it was. I’m referring to the religious people spending tons of their money at Chick Fila because of something that Chick Fila was taking heat for. I’ve forgotten all the details of it.
Who would’ve thought I would have a cause to do a similar thing? My cause is the US Postal Service. I did a little griping in my last post about them and while I am inconvenienced by the situation, I understand it’s not their fault directly and they’re being played for pawns. And when that sort of injustice happens, you have to step in and help out.
Now, just as an aside, I have no problem with trying to make the USPS financially solvent. That’s something for another discussion. But, I do have a problem with what has been instituted recently. And even completely setting aside the conspiracy nature of it all, for all of the supposed business acumen of the people in charge, there could not have been a worse time to implement these changes.
I mean, aside from impacting the next election, which they swear it won’t, but uh huh. This is going to impact the Christmas shopping/shipping season. Not to ignore the fact that it’s impacting small businesses right now. And we know how much the government loves to promote how they love small businesses. I haven’t heard anything yet about delayed social security checks or medical deliveries, but I suppose that will come soon enough. No, I’m not a business guy, but even I can see this is a poor decision, especially for someone who just walks in to a job and says, "Here’s what we’re going to do".
First off, new kid on the block should have taken a couple of months to learn about the internal workings of the business and formulate a plan, even if the plan was to fuck everything up. Then the best time to implement the plan would be at the beginning of the year. First off, it’s a great timeline marker. Second, you don’t fuck with the election or holidays.
But, is there ever a good time to slow mail? At the beginning of the year, there’s going to be arguments that the mail is being slowed and it will impact tax refund check deliveries. This is a good opportunity to promote direct deposit of refund checks. Not only is that faster and better, it will save the IRS money from having to print and mail checks. But what about the unbanked? They can’t get direct deposit. Well, remember that story from a while ago about how the USPS was considering becoming a national bank? Remember how it was going to raise money for the USPS? Well, this seems like the perfect time to implement that.
Sorry for the major side story there. The point of the post was how to support the USPS in the present, not some fantasy future. The answer came from, of all places, Car and Driver. Their suggestion, buy toy cars from their online gift shop. Cars, of course.
This solution made a lot of sense to me. You can’t just donate money to a business. That’s weird. You don’t want to buy up a shitload of stamps just to give them money either. That’s weird, too. But buying something from them, where they get the profit, that’s fair. I get something, you get something. Actually, they get a bit more, even.
So I went to their website and to their gift store and picked out a nice little car.
It was only $6. That’s not too bad. I’ll chip in $6 to the cause.
Checking out, I kind of chuckled to myself about having the item shipped. "Whenever it shows up…" And it wasn’t lost on me that they would be shipping the product. So hey, they do get some extra. They get the shipping cost, too. Then the website calculated the shipping cost for me.
$8.45 shipping on a $6 item. Good god. It’s like buying a $2 pen from a homebrew online shopping cart site. But I do want the USPS to succeed, as much as God wants Chick Fila to succeed, so I made the purchase. I have a little 2" Jeep coming in the mail sometime.
Godspeed, USPS.
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