At 8:15 a.m. Friday morning I stood waiting, the only customer in a quiet, cold and beautiful Art Deco Post Office building, waiting for someone to show up on the other side of the counter. There was someone in front of me, another customer, already at the counter but he too had been waiting. Finally, an older, trim and prim black woman emerged silently from the sorting room behind the counter. Her movements were slow, deliberate and graceful but she wouldn't make eye contact and barely managed a "That will be...." whatever the amount owed for the transaction. It had taken her 15 minutes to do that customer's business.
Finally, it was my turn. I needed to buy 435 $.59 stamps. Again, she made no eye contact and seemed a bit annoyed at my request. Without saying anything, she disappeared into another part of the area behind the counter and was gone for at least 10 minutes. I was counting by now because I was urgently needed back at my office, so that I could hold down the fort for my co-workers who had to leave to go to San Francisco, asap.
The postal clerk then made her way back to me and proceeded to count out and UPC-read each sheet of the 20-stamps-to-a-page, for a total of 435 stamps. It was interminable. She never spoke the entire time except for a soft, "That's 20, that's 40," and so on. She never smiled either. Then I had to give her a check from my boss, show her my driver's license since the check wasn't mine. Slowly she began scanning a 100-page collection of names, looking for me, making sure I wasn't someone who had foisted bad checks onto the Federal Government. This process took another 7 minutes. It was all I could do to not sigh rudely or to say something. I knew if I did, she'd probably slow it down even more. Despite my sunny attempts to smile encouragement her way, the entire transaction, from my first approach to the counter to walking out those automatic doors took 27 minutes. To buy stamps. Stamps that are probably going to go up in price any minute now as the federal government grapples with deficits and unemployment and salaries and unions.
As I left the counter, my precious stamps in hand, I glanced back to see that there were 8 people waiting in line. Even though you could see other postal personnel milling around in the back, in the sorting room, at no time did anyone bother to poke their head out and ask, "May I help you?"
This, I fear, is pretty emblematic of most government bureaucracies, especially those that have direct interface with the public and who are supposedly providing services. What I've seen and experienced first hand is that those jobs have become bureaucratic entitlements, that the focus is not on service but rather passing time in a 9-hour day (1 hour for lunch, 2 15-minute breaks). With rigid work rules, little else to do but certain exact things, and innovation or short-cuts anathema (boat rocking), is it any wonder that tax payers are getting a little irritable or that the Internet, FedEx and UPS are making the USPS obsolete?
Here's the thing: our country is in a world of hurt. Unemployment is now 7.2% and growing. The idea that someone can keep their job, even when they provide such slow, almost arrogantly indifferent service, seems to me the highest form of disrespect. To all of us customers but also to themselves and their co-workers.
And what most people don't want to admit is that it's those folks in the bureaucracies who just don't give a fuck who will prevent the capital "C" change Obama and the newer breed of leaders and we, their followers are calling for. The bureaucrats who can't be fired just want to do their job, at their pace and on their terms and the rest of us can just kiss their civil service ass.
