Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Bee-dee-bee-dee. Way to go Buck!

Hey thanks U.S. Postal Service. You finally got something right.

After years of raising stamp prices--I remember when they were a nice, round quarter, and I hear the price might go up to 41 cents next year--the USPS has come up a great new service:

the Automated Postal Center!

You can call it the USPSAPC if you like, but I will call it "Tweekie" for that lovable robot on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century . . . starring Gil Gerard and (more importantly) Erin Grey!!

Now, where was it?

Oh . . . yes, Tweekie the mailman.

I had to mail a small package to Old Navy this morning. (Hey Old Navy!! Comin' at 'cha!) I was swinging by there this morning on the way to work, before 8 am, and I figured the main area of the post office, with the holiday-stressed employees would not be open.

But I had heard about the installation of these USPSAPCs and hoped that we would have them at our neighborhood postal center.

Sure enough, there it was sitting, waiting to serve. I was able to put my package on the scale, type in the zip code, pay with debit or credit, receive my printed postage (available in various rates and speeds of deliver), affix it to the postal item, and place it in the postal bin without speaking to a single, solitary sole.

So, by shuffling all the grunt work onto these mindless electronic slaves, we can free up the regular postal employees to doing other stuff--then maybe they won't be so surly (and believe me people, I know surly).

Happy Holidays from Tweekie--USPSAPC #12953ABDXZ34Q

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