Don't Privatize the United States Postal Service

    I work at a postal facility in Athens, GA.  We are currently dealing with the extra volume of parcels created by the Christmas season.  This is approximately twice our normal volume.  Many of these parcels contain gifts for children, sent by relatives living far away.  Last night I found several items, clearly intended for a child (coloring books, games, etc.) loose on the conveyor belt that takes the parcels into the parcel-sorting machine.  I gathered up everything and announced to the other people running the machine that we needed to find the open box.  One of the women told me she had seen an open box that had a Pictionary game in it.  She had also found some children's card games and set them aside.  We hunted through everything on the conveyor belt and then went down the line looking into every receptacle.  I told Nancy, the other employee, that if privatization happens, you'll never seen anyone going the extra mile again.  She agreed.  We couldn't find the opened parcel.  I told her I would put the items into a bin with a note for the carriers' supervisor, telling her to inform all the carriers to be on the lookout for an open box containing a gift for a child.  Then I went to lunch.  When I came back, she and another woman, Janise, had found the box.  I put everything back inside and rewrapped the box securely.  It was from someone's grandmother in California.  

  This is exactly the sort of thing that happens every day at the USPS.  Postmasters, carriers, clerks, and mail handlers go the extra mile for the customers because they don't see them as just "customers," but people.  There was a time in America when the local post office wasn't just a place to pick up or send off mail, but a center for the local community.  My mother was a postmaster at a post office in a town of 120 people.  "Oh, how inefficient," some Republican politician would say.  I say NO.  It was a place where neighbors would run into each other and talk and exchange news.  Privatization would ruin all of this, as the push for "profit" has already ruined so much of what the local post office used to stand for.  Don't privatize the USPS.