So Kimberly & I went to the post office yesterday to buy some stamps. Much to our surprise, we found every stamp machine emptied and turned off, each with a posted sign that said something like, "This machine scheduled to be removed on December 5."
Yes, that's right, the post office has decided that it no longer makes economic sense for them to sell stamps. I found an article online confirming it, saying that the USPS had plans to remove all stamp machines from post offices by 2010.
The USPS claims that it's just as convenient to buy stamps at a store, from a rural postal carrier, or by mail. Yep, that's right. It's just as convenient for me to schlep down to the post office, weigh my packages, bring them home, log on somewhere to buy stamps by the mail, wait 3-5 business days, get my stamps, and then mail everyone out.
What a bunch of wankers we have running our post office! It's got to be the same people who decided that it made lots of sense to remove the tomato from the salad at TWA (and eventually the whole salad and then the whole dinner). It's cost cutting in the name of capitalism alone, and damn who might have been using those services that got cut.
As far as I can tell, this bit of idiocy is part of a desperate attempt by the USPS to make themselves entirely obsolete before the internet does so. In that same article, I found out that the USPS is also removing many of those big blue mail drops, because they're apparently not cost effective either.
Idiots.
The real cherry on top, I thought, was the fact that our local post office decided to remove their stamp machines exactly three weeks before Christmas. Because it's not like that holiday of gluttonous spending so overtaxes the mail delivery system that there's already hour-long lines at the post office or anything.
Before you had to stand in line just to buy stamps.
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