Why the Government Shouldn't Run the Post Office

Now that we've survived moving and are getting settled in our new house, we've noticed that we don't get much mail. My husband especially misses his daily Wall Street Journal.

Monday I filled out the change of address form at the Post Office, thinking that it would only take a couple of days for our forwarded mail to start arriving. After all, this is what happened the last time we moved (just a year and half ago).

Today I stopped by the Post Office to find out what happened to our mail. Silly me! I assumed the change of address would be handled by the local Post Office, but no!, it's being done at a major P.O., probably Detroit. Once our new address is entered in the system, we'll be notified and our mail delivery will resume. In the meantime, our mail is piling up in some other P.O., probably Detroit, and we can't even pick it up.

If that weren't frustrating enough, I asked how long it might take to get our new address in the system. Hold on to your socks: at least a week, maybe two. By the time the P.O. figures out where we live, we'll have a BOX of Wall Street Journals waiting for us, not to mention our regular mail, and all the junk we usually just throw away. SIGH.

What would Ben Franklin think of his Post Office? Maybe, like me, he'd think someone more efficient than the government should be running it.