Postal Strikes and Optional Rights

[Dr Strangelove]

[testerone]

Total PITA for us in small towns. There are no big stores so Amazon is a must, and there is no home delivery.
The line ups at the Post Office to pick up packages is longer than at the supermarket.

Amazon KNOWS.
My Amazon Prime that's supposed to get 2 day free delivery - ordered something Nov 1st and the earliest delivery date was listed as Dec 9th. I got it Monday luckily.

[Dr Strangelove]

[testerone]

Yes this small town is being devastated.
There are lineups in local stores and missing the amazon option people are being forced to pay a little more and buy what the need instead of what they want.
I have leftover pension money as I'm not able to spend as much, and I'll be mandated by the postal strike to send the kids e-transfers this Christmas rather than useless things or cheques like it was 1953.]
MY FREEDUMBS !!

[Dr Strangelove]

Food deserts are a thing and so are news deserts. This strike is showing just how much of this country is over the edge, never mind just hanging on. Delivery is thankless and underpaid like teachers. It is a necessity for a functioning society and yet is run on the lowest common denominator. In times of plenty is can be ignored but the next 4 years is any port in a storm.

[Dr Strangelove]

[al_keda]

Yes this small town is being devastated.

Sorry to hear that, but . . . if a short postal strike is causing such economic devastation then the post office is not the problem, it is just revealing the underlying weakness.

It was always teetering on the edge, just the postal strike pushed it over.

[testerone]

Ordered new glasses online and got 2 calls from "The Customer Service Center" that I assume were scams and didn't answer, then an email about 'delivery attempt' from some outfit I's never heard of.
Out of curiosity alone, as I had ordered glasses and they still hadn't shown up, I looked up the domain name of the email sender. It was an obscure outfit that made the lenses for the outfit I'd ordered from. Fished it from the Trash and they informed me that due to the postal strike, they were rerouting it by courier.

Right at that moment there was a knock on my window and this young East Indian guy standing there. Went to my door and his courier truck was in the drive, my package in his hand.
What I remember best was that he was nervous and scared because my massive, vicious, ankle height chichuahua cross was yipping and wagging it's tail furiously at him. The regular courier packs doggie treats and he was expecting his goodie!

Can't say I've missed the handful of flyers for stores hours away that are in the mail daily.

[al_keda]

I switched to mostly electronic delivery of things. Unless it's a physical item, paper is just a waste of carbon credits.

[Dr Strangelove]

There was a time where you could just mail in forms, now authority is online. Covid was a blessing as this put a boot in the ass of the ministry to finally modernize. We still use fax for forms but at least they can do it online as well now. Manual claims for orthotics is still a PIA but they can at least fax that as well. The problem has been that of signatures and a means to verify legitimacy and tight control of personal information. You just can't email or use slack to transmit or confirm someone's PI over the internet as a government as it is in violation of their own laws. Laws that are intended to safeguard from leaks. Yes, faxes have issues but it is site to site so breaches can be mitigated and kept localized. Internet would be a broadcaster of such detail on a international scale.

The postal strike has only cauterized the workflow and broken the habit of many died in to wool practitioners that refused to learn how to open a laptop. All of the 3rd party insurers have apps for the clients so they can submit from their phone. We are not going back to the horse and buggy.