The postman always rings twice, but not for long

Posted at 2:38 PM on January 28, 2009 by Steve Mullis (3 Comments)

OK, so apparently U.S. Postmaster General John E. Potter asked lawmakers to lift the requirement that the agency deliver mail six days a week. Meaning you would only get those Cub Food ads and Menard's circulars five days a week instead of six.

He says this issue is "dwindling mail volume" has caused a huge loss in revenue for the USPS, to the tune of $2.8 billion dollars. While the revenue loss is not a good thing, the fact that we are sending less paper mail, creating less pollution, killing less trees, yadda, yadda, hippie, patchouli, etc., is probably a good thing.

All that aside, I was curious about how one actually becomes the U.S. Postmaster General, which sounds oddly military in title. I didn't find how the actual process goes to get the position, but I did learn something interesting from my old friend Wikipedia.

Apparently, until 1971, the U.S. Postmaster General was part of the President's cabinet and even in line to be president if the proper King Ralph scenario took place. Once Hollywood gets a hold of this knowledge, I foresee a few things happening:

1. An Adam Sandler or Seth Rogen vehicle where, by some strange twist of fate a mailman becomes Postmaster General and then president. Call it King Ralph meets Man of the Year meets me thinking about this way too long.
2. A period picture with Paul Giamatti playing Ben Franklin and a scenario similar to the one above occurs, just with muted colors and a little more feeling. I chose Paul Giamatti because he's played both John Adams and Harvey Pekar, I figure Ben Franklin is somewhere along that spectrum.
3. Michael Bay blows things up with a U.S. Postmaster who wants to be president. And robots. And flying things....that blow up. Perhaps a flying, robot mailman that blows things up.

So, should U.S. mail delivery stop on the slow days? Not on my watch, it'll mess up my NetFlix rotation.

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Comments (3)

considering the fact that "Mr" Potter gave himself and several of his men 22% pay raises in 2008, I believe he and the boys might just be part of the problem. Do ya think?

Posted by siah | January 28, 2009 9:09 PM

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Get rid of the over paid and under worked management and you could save ALOT. How many supervisors do you need when the workers are out of the office 80% of their day? Just because you suspend delivery one extra day, just means the workers have to deliver more mail on the days they do work, probably for the same money.

Posted by PattyP | January 28, 2009 10:41 PM

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Netflix! Good point. If I can't pop a DVD in the mail on Tuesday, that gives me only one day (Wednesday) to get it in the mail if I want a new movie by the weekend.

Part of me does kind of find it delightful, though, that they're targeting Tuesday. It's so...unexpected, "asymetrical" in a way. Tuesday? Mind-blowing, in a tiny way.

Posted by Jeff Horwich | January 29, 2009 9:59 AM

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