Circulary illogical
You can't get there from here
Standing in line the other morning I witnessed what I myself, to varying degrees, have done many times. A man had traveled into town with his packages for shipping at the post office. Upon reaching the counter he asked if, due to their weight, he should bring them to the front or the back of the post office. The clerk asked him how much they weighed and upon hearing his answer informed him they exceeded the weight limits of the post office. He said he’d checked online and that 70 pounds was acceptable. No, she said, fifty pounds is the USPS maximum. He had mistakenly confused the USPS for UPS.
In 1919 the American Messenger Company switched their name to UPS. Then, in 1970 the United States Postal Service splits out of the US Government as part of the Postal Reorganization Act.1 Somewhere along the line thereafter, the post office started branding themselves USPS and from this, confusion ensues. While the history of the post office is maligned with mistakes and controversy, I suggest, the post office as a service is important for a society.
My parents did not have a mailbox at the house. When they wanted mail, they’d go into the small mountain town and pick it up at the counter. Our address was name @ general delivery, city, state. My first address, that wasn’t a dorm mailbox, was a Post Office Box as is my current one.
To get a POB you have to have a government issued ID. You must also have an address or secondary acceptable document that ties you to a particular location within their service area, whether personally or as a business. They accept utility bills which rely upon an assigned address or a deed. I can only imagine why these restrictions exist as I do not know why. Perhaps digging deeper into this in the future is warranted. As I have just gone through the reassignment process I thought I would share a few observations which seemed odd to me.
You must check your box at a regular interval. They do not like them to go unchecked or for mail to accumulate. The Post Office also does not hold mail for more than 30 days. This can make life for frequent travelers interesting. Non compliance leads to cranky postal employees.
When I went into the post office to return my keys, they told me I could not do this unless I had closed my PO box online already. Evidently the post office, where you sign-up for a mailbox, does not want you to change your address there or to return your keys there. Not without first going online to enter a valid email address and telephone number. Curiously this number cannot be something like google voice either, whether it’s your only number or not. When I asked what if I did not have a telephone or email I could see the springs and gears go Boing! in their mind. Good luck I guess ?
I can think of several good reasons that this might be the case. Perhaps these aren’t even as draconian as I imagine as well. However, since they do exist, their purposes can and likely will become more nefarious.
The USPS informed delivery system, that one that will email you photos of your mail being processed, collects and stores all the to and from addresses for all the mail it processes. Imagine the social-graph this creates? When this is further enriched with the contact list(s) from all those phone apps which ask for access to your contacts and your email address you can see how quickly any notion of privacy, if not already a distant memory, could be at great risk.
Whenever we’re offered a convenience today, or a service for free, we should stop and ask who, what, when, where, why, and how. Unfortunately, all too frequently, people simply comply and they know this. That is why those that wish to harvest, accumulate, and broker vast amounts of data have such lengthy end user licensing agreements or terms and conditions policies. Telling someone that you do not collect, store, or sell their personal information does not take much legal language but creating a vast web of complex legalese for which to wage law fare upon does.
I lament the state of affairs regarding privacy and grid lock-in that continues to persist, ever increasing its grapple on society. I suspect that more and more people, though still an extreme minority of the populations, will bump into these issues. Will they be enough to influence a different direction?
https://www.historyassociates.com/usps-history/