Disband the US Postal Service!
If you want to see true incompetence, take a short trip down to your local post office. Even here in the deep south - the land of faulty infrastructure and bass-ackward priorities - the post office stands out in their dedication to ineptitude. Merely telling me that you've sent me a package by way of the USPS is enough to make me cringe. Thanks for the package...I hope it makes it here.
When you walk into our post office here in Gainesville, the first thing you notice is three long benches in the middle of the room. This branch regularly sees incredibly long lines, you see. So, instead of spending time to figure out why it takes so damn long to serve your average patron, they give you a place to park your butt and watch CNN while you wait the 20-45 minutes to pickup your package. Honestly, what types of requests do you think they get? Buying stamps, picking up packages (that sometimes require - gasp - signatures), and sending packages. That's gotta be like 99% of their business. If you know that something like 75% of your customers are only there to do something that they could just as easily accomplish through a vending machine-like interface, why the hell don't you put together an express lane or two?
In my case, I had to pickup a piece of registered mail from my former employer, which required my signature. I got this cryptic slip of paper thrown at my front door yesterday - not tucked in, not in the mail box for some reason - and from the color, I knew the situation would require a visit to the post office, also known as the seventh circle of hell. I gave up trying to read these slips ages ago; they're apparently meant for monkeys to fill out with crayons. Just mark a few boxes, and you've got yourself a choose-your-own-adventure story that no sane person can parse. The one I showed to the clerk at the post office today apparently ended with my coming back tomorrow. He tried to point out the section of the slip that said so, but all I saw was some 6-point italics and a large black pen mark checking the accompanying box. When I got home, I looked again, and noticed that my mailman had kept his options open - he had indicated both that he would attempt re-delivery today, and that the package would be available for pickup from the post office after 8AM today.
After failing to receive bills, seeing cards take three weeks to make it from Kansas to Florida - strapped to the back of a cane toad, no doubt - and seeing the top of a box that had once contained a dozen or so books arrive at our doorstep in a plastic bag that read, "We Care!" I can't say that this latest interaction surprises me at all. What I can say is I cannot believe my taxes pay for this.
Honestly, we privatize things like health care, where there's a blatant conflict of interest between profits and patient well-being, but for some reason the post office keeps chugging along. Why can't we put a bullet in this lame duck, and put it out of all of our misery? UPS and FedEx both deliver on-time to my house, and I've never seen a dismembered box-top show up at the door. If the USPS weren't subsidized by our tax money, postage would probably be higher than UPS/FedEx rates, simply because of the organizational inefficiency and overhead. They could not compete. I say we should put these taxes somewhere else - like environmental conservation and/or energy efficiency research - and deregulate this market.
Oh, and if you do decide to start using UPS, pay for your metering online at http://www.ups.com. The UPS Store charges something like a 75% markup for the same service, and you can still drop it off at any of these stores. Finally, if you have had experiences like mine, and want to scream at the wind a little, you can email them using a form at http://www.usps.com (just click on Contact Us at the bottom of the page, then click on the Email Us tab at the top of the next page). Too bad they don't have to listen...
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