I shouldn't bash the U.S. Post Office too much.  After all, that I get a misdelivered letter in my mailbox occasionally or that I once got twelve (all addressed to different addresses, none to mine) on one day must be a drop in the bucket, considering the millions of pieces of mail that the PO handles.  That I've had some sticky experiences because of misdirected or misplaced checks shouldn't matter.  Everybody makes mistakes.

That sometimes letters must go upstate before they can go downstate or out of town before they can be delivered across town shouldn't concern me.  The Post Office must have a reason for that, and the letters usually get where they're going – eventually.

That it's cheaper and faster to use FedEx, which usually doesn't have long lines, should not necessarily reflect badly on the Post Office.  FedEx isn't burdened with tons of junk mail and probably doesn't pay extravagant pensions to its workers.

However, the handling of the latest postal rate increase from 37 cents to 39 cents raises some doubts about efficiency.  First, the rate change was not widely publicized.  Unless they heard about it through the grapevine or saw the three-inch blurb on page ten of the local paper, most people didn't know about it until it happened.  This caused an instant and concentrated demand for a gazillion two-cent stamps.  In the days immediately before and after the day the increase took effect, lines in post offices extended beyond the doors – and quite often the ill-prepared post offices had only a few or not two-cent stamps.

What do we call this?  Poor planning?  Inefficiency?  Bad management?  Whatever we call it, it makes me nervous about entrusting my payments for bills and important letters to the U.S. Postal Service.