Identity theft

I sometimes used to ride the mail route with my daddy when I was a little girl. Mother would pack us a lunch, and I would meet him when he came down Highway 50 to my grandmother's country store. I got to sit in the back seat on top of the sorted mail, which was bound by leather straps. I would hand him the next package he needed as we traveled the route through eastern Wake County.

At lunchtime we'd stop at the Old Drugstore, a county landmark and gathering spot, where the owner's dog could drink Coca-Cola out of a bottle, sitting up on his haunches. We'd buy our own drinks and stop by the river bridge to eat our sandwiches. Then we'd finish delivering the mail.

That's a favorite childhood memory from decades ago. But Daddy got promoted and wound up in the post office proper as a clerk, then as acting postmaster. Throughout his various jobs, I saw firsthand his dedication to his duties and to the people of our community. He would delay our own family activities if it meant getting a much-wanted or necessary package delivered to someone after hours. Proud of his mail-sorting accuracy and speed, he would stop to help anyone for as long as they needed when they entered the post office door. It was personal, not “by the book” service.

The Nov. 21 hearing on the proposed closure of Asheville’s mail-processing plant was by the book. Full of postal acronyms and talk of efficiency, the formal introductions and slide presentation took up the first half-hour, leaving only one hour for public comment from a large, feisty audience. Each person who took the microphone was allowed to ask one question; direct answers were in short supply. And the 8 o'clock cutoff time was an arbitrary choice; the building was open until 9 p.m. I know, because I stayed till then. (More about that later.)

The Postal Service representatives spoke dispassionately about consolidating the Asheville plant and a larger facility in Greenville, S.C. They couched it in terms of "revised entry times" and "reduced footprint" and "fully utilized work forces." And — my favorite quote of the evening — the repeated management goal to "optimize the machines." In simplest terms, the U.S. Postal Service is looking at what they call a "radical network realignment" that would slash the number of mail-processing plants nationwide from the current 500 or so to less than 200 by 2013.

The only way the Postal Service can consolidate these facilities and "optimize the machines" (keep them working around the clock sorting mail) is to lower its delivery standards. So instead of overnight service, first-class mail in Western North Carolina will take two to three days to arrive (and potentially longer, as several people testified).

Ostensibly, all this is planned so the Postal Service can tighten its belt in response to declining demand for first-class mail service, which is the agency’s bread and butter. But as more than one astute public commenter observed, it’s a questionable business model when you sacrifice service standards for the one thing that so directly affects your bottom line. And it was unsettling that the management representatives at this public meeting couldn't speak to the potential loss of revenue due to reducing the quality of service. That didn't seem to be a factor they'd even considered.

One retired mail carrier who spoke during the evening — a 37-year veteran — summed it up pretty well. "The bottom line here is money: You've got one product to sell, and it's service. My question is, how come you're not concentrating on service? I've seen it getting worse, and I'm appalled. It's crazy. … Please put the ‘service’ back in the Postal Service."

But the moderator immediately channeled that request back into the parlance of the day, saying, "We do want to be [financially] sound. We're in dire straits for cash liquidity."

And pointedly, a number of independent businesspeople asked about the effects of closing the Asheville plant on bulk mail, political mail and the delivery of orders, goods and payments. One attorney, concerned about his legal mail, asked point-blank, "Can you guarantee next-day delivery in the city of Asheville?"

The answer? "The overnight [service] would become a two-day service."

Meanwhile, at the social level, this machine-efficient service will also cost us an Asheville postmark. The Paris of the South won't get her name splashed on postcards or first-class mail unless the sender wants to go into a post office and request a hand stamp. In terms of mail origin, all of Western North Carolina's towns will become "Greenville, S.C."

A few minutes after 8 p.m., the moderator closed the session, despite many protests from the audience. The microphones were turned off, and the public began to filter out the door.

There, they were met by a telling juxtaposition.

Occupy Asheville had assembled in a corner of the lobby and was holding forth with a spirited round of discussion. Anyone could speak, and what they had to say was then repeated by the entire group, in bite-size phrases — a process known as "mike check" that’s designed to intentionally hear and amplify the public voice. Not quite the style of hearing that had just played out inside the auditorium.

Attracted by that cooperative spirit, a number of people leaving the auditorium stayed on until the whole group left the building promptly at 9 p.m., to "honor A-B Tech," as they put it. And by that time, the heretofore strangers gathered on the edges of the crowd had started participating in the singsong repetition of comments.

I also saw at least one local lawyer, two elected officials, some postal union members, a self-confessed Republican and a dozen or more all-purpose citizens among this small crowd. I'm guessing not one of them came to Ferguson Auditorium that night expecting to participate in an Occupy Asheville rally, but they’d found interesting common ground.

I wonder what my daddy would have thought of Occupy Asheville? In his day, he did befriend the hippies that moved into an abandoned homestead in our community. And with his penchant for getting along with anyone, he might at least have paused and heard them say, in unison, "I think the Postal Service deserves a round of applause."

— Nelda Holder can be reached at nfholder@gmail.com.

The U.S. Postal Service is accepting public comment by mail only; comments must be postmarked by Dec. 6. Send comments to: Manager, Consumer & Industry Contact, Mid-Carolinas District, 2901 Scott Futrell Drive, Charlotte, NC 28228-9976.

SHARE

Thanks for reading through to the end…

We share your inclination to get the whole story. For the past 25 years, Xpress has been committed to in-depth, balanced reporting about the greater Asheville area. We want everyone to have access to our stories. That’s a big part of why we've never charged for the paper or put up a paywall.

We’re pretty sure that you know journalism faces big challenges these days. Advertising no longer pays the whole cost. Media outlets around the country are asking their readers to chip in. Xpress needs help, too. We hope you’ll consider signing up to be a member of Xpress. For as little as $5 a month — the cost of a craft beer or kombucha — you can help keep local journalism strong. It only takes a moment.

Before you comment

The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.

4 thoughts on “Identity theft

  1. Chris Pelly

    Well done Nelda. Fine piece of writing. I intend to send a print version of this as part of my comments to the U.S. Postal Service.

  2. Barry Summers

    Sorry to get all partisan-y over this, but it needs to be pointed out that the current situation we and the USPS find ourselves in is a direct result of Republican attacks on organized labor.

    “The biggest budget problem facing the USPS is the mandate placed on it by an outgoing Republican Congress in 2006, requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund, over a decade, its employee pensions for 75 years. The USPS is among a handful of employers still offering a defined benefit pension plan that provides security to retirees after a lifetime of work. The pre-funding requirement was and remains a poison pill for the postal service. No other pension plan, either public or private, is required to pre-fund for 75 years into the future. Without this burden, the USPS would be in the black today. The cost of pre-funding has exceeded $20 billion over the past 4 years Ц an amount that roughly equals USPS losses for that period.”

    http://huffingtonpostunionofbloggers.org/2011/09/29/gop-behind-the-u-s-postal-service-crisis/

    Republicans rammed through a poison pill for one of the last bastions of unionized public employees – the Postal Service, by forcing the USPS to prefund their pension programs to an absurd point guaranteed to lead to drastic losses and the commensurate solution of: laying off workers and cutting back on service, which leads to a downward spiral of declining revenue and further cuts. 10 years later? Voila! No more unionized workforce, no more USPS unfairly ‘competing’ with Fedex, UPS, etc.

    • Libertarian

      So making sure the Postal Service has the money to pay for what they are promising is somehow wrong? If pre-funding is causing the Postal Service to go bankrupt then perhaps they’re spending our tax money on too many perks. I know a person who worked for the Post Office in Johnson City and retired making $77k a year. How can you justify a mailman making twice the median income for a region? He did not have a college degree and didn’t even graduate high school, yet he made more than a civil engineer does with a masters degree and a P.E.

      I don’t think the Post Office needs to be shutting down the mail centers. They need to reform their entitlements and salaries to reflect reality.

    • Barry Summers

      So making sure the Postal Service has the money to pay for what they are promising is somehow wrong?

      It is if it’s way beyond what any other entity public or private is required to pre-fund. Making them siphon off 75 years worth of benefit-funding in only ten years is insane – it’s not a sound method of financing their obligations, it’s an attempt to strangle them under an unfair level of debt. As the article cited above points out, the level of pre-funding pulled out of USPS revenues since this law was passed ($20 billion) roughly equals the amount they are in the red for that period. The Postal Service could be in the black and competing with private shippers if it weren’t for this crazy burden placed on it by the Republicans.

      I know a person who worked for the Post Office in Johnson City and retired making $77k a year.

      How long was he working there? Is $77k a crazy amount of money for someone at the end of their career? The Postal service is and has always been one of the ladders for working-class people to have a quality of life that used to be reserved for people with money. Pulling that ladder out from under them has always been the goal of those who think we need to return to a day when being born into wealth was the determining factor in where your children would land in society.

      Public service jobs like the USPS, public schools, etc, are the Great Equalizer. No wonder the lapdogs of the rich want to do away with them.

Leave a Reply

To leave a reply you may Login with your Mountain Xpress account, connect socially or enter your name and e-mail. Your e-mail address will not be published. All fields are required.