Depends on the carrier.  With the US Postal System and cutbacks, a lot of smaller stations were shut down and more things were routed through distribution centers in other areas, which can lead to some ridiculous routing.  Commercial carriers can have similar problems, depending on the area.  With COVID and Post-COVID, a lot of transport companies were seriously undermanned and still have not filled positions, leading to consolidating routes and shifting delivery hubs to other locations.  This is especially true with subcontractors, who deliver packages for these services.  In my work, we deal with some of these issues, as we have our deliveries split between two stations, with one handling high priority air transport packages and the other handling surface traffic.  The surface station is 50 miles away, while the air transport is 5 minutes from us (but closer to our airport).  Our surface hub used to be about 30 miles away and with the change came a change in the subcontractor who handles our pick-ups and delivery of the packages we hold for customers.  The new contractor is trying to nickel and dime things and the end result has been a parade of new, poorly trained drivers and upset customers, who call us because we have a local phone number, but no involvement with the actual delivery portion of the business (I work for the printing and retail side, where we process shipments and accept dropoffs).

The problem you have in both the commercial and quasi-governmental systems (post office) is that corporate/Wall Street mentality means that they try to maximize profit by cutting costs to the bare minimum; but, at the expense of service and rational and truly efficient systems.  They will justify it with lip service to increased efficiencies; but, the end result is a tired and stressed workforce, with high turnover and dissatisfied customers who will bail when a better alternative comes along.  So, cut staff by closing centers in smaller areas, consolidate in regional hubs that are usually located more due to political reasons than actually centralized locations, then a lot of rationalizing decisions that have nothing to do with efficiencies.  Then, you have a package picked up in a location, that should go across town, but is taken to a regional center, outside of town, then routed right back to that same locale.

This was probably a decade ago; but, I had ordered a DVD from the Warner Archive site, which was being fulfilled by a warehouse in Indiana.  I lived in East Central Illinois, less than an hour from the Illinois/Indiana border.  You'd think it would come directly from Indiana to my locale, just across the border.  Nope, it went right past my location, to the other side of the state, where they had the regional hub, to then be routed back the direction from which it came, to be delivered to my home.   It's the same problem with airlines, as you are routed to hubs, rather than direct flights that would consume less fuel and be less costly to operate, like it used to be, before the 1980s.

Here in Illinois, most smaller communities had post offices closed down, or stripped to the bone, while regional centers sort stuff out.  At my workplace, we have people shipping with us because previous shipments though the post office took anywhere from two weeks to over a month, even over short distances.  The Postal Service used to be very efficient and reliable; until commercial and political forces tried to get their hands on their business, cutting their funding and forcing up costs, creating self-fulfilling prophecies of loss and inefficiency, to then justify privatizing elements of their service, towards an ultimate goal of complete privatization.  My own employer has blood on its hands in that, as do our competitors.


The same model has been used across agencies, at the Federal, State and Municipal levels, in aid of privatization of public services, mostly resulting in higher rates to the consumers, inefficient and unresponsive service, and a lot of executives pocketing bonuses and large scale investors making huge profits, with public subsidies.  Sadly, it isn't something split along political ideology lines, as both major parties have aided these things.  I'm all for a free market, but the market, as it exists, is hardly "free." 

Good one.

Likely means the carrier for the route that your building is on had already had his daily mail sorted and was either out the door or ready to go out the door before it would be sorted into the proper route so it could go out for delivery. Pretty much everything I ever shipped or had delivered goes out the day after it arrives at the facility because once it arrives it needs to be sorted internally into the proper route for the carrier to take. I'm assuming, since your in the city, there are multiple carriers servicing multiple routes out of that particular post office building, and they likely receive thousands (more likely tens of thousands for a large city post office) of pieces of mail and parcels that need to be sorted into the proper routes each day, and do so we while being massively underfunded and understaffed thanks to the nitwit who holds the postmaster office. And each carrier is likely servicing 2 or more routes each day to cover absences and vacations since part time support staff to cover those largely doesn't exist any more due to the cuts that created the staff shortages. I'm amazed our mail gets delivered at all, let alone in anything resembling a timely manner with how badly understaffed and mismanaged at the top the USPS is. The employees are doing yeoman's work to keep the system form collapsing form the top down.

Our local post office branch is the only one for a small city (they closed the other two branches due to budget cuts). There are three total clerks on staff to man the desk at it, one of them is booked all day just to handle passport applications, so that leaves one to man the counter and one to cover breaks/lunches so at most peak times there is 1 clerk and the line is out into the street if you need to do something at the counter. I know people who work there, and they've been told there's no money in the budget to hire more staff. Most of the carriers working out of there have a morning route and an afternoon route, and then sometimes have to cover a third if too many people are out sick or are on vacation. They've got stacks of applications for people who are qualified and want to get a job there, but there's no hiring being done except to replace those lost to attrition.

Again, it's a minor miracle the employees doing the work manage to keep that system afloat.

-M

Our post office requires appointment as well, but all appointments are booked about 3 weeks out typically, hence one person spends all day just ding passport applications.

-M

Unfortunately, no one else in my clan is psyched for comic book shows these days, so I will be engaged in other pursuits, but please have a double blast for my sake!