I have only a few days left to send my three accepted artworks to Springfield for the Big E’s Photo Competition. The plan was to pick up the prints from McGreevy Pro Lab (my pro lab of choice), grab a USPS Priority Mail flat rate shipping container, purchase the necessary stamps for shipping, go back to my office to print out the hang tags, tape the hang tags to my artworks, put everything in the shipping container, and then drop it off at the post office so that it can be delivered to Springfield at Priority Mail speed.
And if you’ve read the headline … you know what kind of clusterfuck I ran into.
I shall explain.
Rather than guess how much postage is needed for shipping three foam-boarded artworks, I grabbed one of the “medium flat rate” shipping containers. The sign on the post office said that the necessary postage for this shipping container is $21.05. Okay. That would be two $10 stamps, a $1 stamp, and a 5c stamp.
I walk up to the counter and ask the postal employee to sell me $21.05 in stamps.
“We don’t have those stamps. I can print out metered postage once you hand me your package,” he said.
“No, that’s fine,” I replied, “I still have to pack the box. All I need is the postage. Are you telling me you don’t have high-denomination stamps?”
“Not here,” he said.
I looked at the wall behind him. There were plenty of wall advertisements for various commemorative stamps at standard “Forever” pricing. Then again, how would it look if I purchased 27 “Forever” stamps and slathered them all over the shipping box?
Yeah, imagine the judges receiving a shipping box that was coated in Spongebob Squarepants commemorative postage. Certainly THAT doesn’t scream “unhinged” to the recipient.
I had no choice. I took the shipping box back to my office, took care of the necessary hangtag information and preparation, placed the three artworks in the box, and brought the package back to the post office for METERED mail.
Now mind you, this is a Priority Mail shipping box. I handed the employee the box last night.
“Okay, that should get to Springfield by this coming Monday,” he said.
Wait, WHAT??
Since when does Priority Mail take NEARLY A WEEK to travel from Albany to Springfield? Is it being delivered by a mule named Sal? This is PRIORITY MAIL, the box says PRIORITY MAIL, is “Priority Mail” now a euphemism for “We’ll get it there at some point in time, but yeah, you should have just taken it there yourself”?
Ugh. Once i handed the package to the postal employee, I couldn’t take it back. I’m stuck. I now have to hope the shipment arrives in time for judging and doesn’t get bounced on a “we didn’t get it in time” technicality.
But even then … I’m still thinking to myself … why in God’s name did the post office NOT have suitable postage stamps? And Heaven forbid that I would have needed to include necessary postage for return shipping, you can’t just put a non-dated metered strip in the shipping crate with your goods.
Screw this. This morning I’m going to place an order with the post office’s online store and buy my own postage directly. I don’t have time for this crapola.
Yeah, and I know who to blame for this debacle.
Donald Trump. That orange goblin installed Louis DeJoy as the Postmaster General, and DeJoy’s main goal was to rip out speed-sorting machines and jack up postage prices and make people want to use FedEx – which, by the way, once employed DeJoy as a corporate head. I guess when you’re a Trump appointee, they’ll let you do it. Grab ’em by the ZIP code, right?
As you can tell … I’m not happy with this.
But I have no choice. This is my new lot in life. Ugh.
I just hope that all this work will be worth it in the end. And next year … I’ll just bring the artworks to Springfield myself.
Postal service. A classic oxymoron.
Chuck The Writer 
I can almost understand the scarcity of high-priced stamps. Seems a lot easier all the way around for a machine to simply spit out a sticker. And you could always request that it be hand-cancelled.
You must be talking about the same Louis DeJoy who Biden kept on for four years, and who – prior to Trump 2.0 – got $9.6 billion in the early 2020s to acquire a fleet of 66,000 electric vehicles (Oshkosh B’gosh!). Results to date, about 250. Yeah, he’s gotta go.
Not long ago I tracked an incoming Priority Mail package from VA. Made it as close as Albany. But instead of taking a left, westward, it took off to Massena, then to Springfield, MA, Brooklyn, Albany again, and then here to Scary Co.
More recently, I sent a first-class letter to Rensselaer, which arrived 5 days later, post-marked in Hartford, CT.
And it’s becoming common practice out here for daily mail to arrive at around 7 pm.
That said, good luck!
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Biden had no choice. He had no power to fire the Postmaster General, that’s a position that’s overseen by a Board of Governors, not by the President. The Board of Governors are chosen by the President and by the Senate to serve staggered seven-year terms. However, when Mitch McConnell blocked several Obama-era nominees for the Board of Governors, and people in those positions retired without replacement, there wasn’t a quorum to oversee postal service hirings. It wasn’t until Trump’s first term that the Senate allowed HIS nominees to join the Board of Governors, who in turn selected DeJoy.
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Didn’t Biden “tinker” with the board of governors?
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Are you using Canada Post? They can get a letter from here to London, England in two days. But sending the same to Williams Lake (an hour away) tales two weeks.
Postal services have suffered from the advent of electronic mail and private package delivery. Their reliance on so-called collectables does not net them the income they expect. CP is basically bankrupt, but forced to continue working under old rules because they won’t update the charter.
The world is changing and those who don’t recognize that get left in the past. Unfortunately governments and other ‘juggernaut’ institutions are highly resistant to such change.
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Sent from my iPhone
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