Comment by dheera 3 months ago
> is universally accessible by design
I disagree. It requires taking time out of business hours, and they don't pay you your salary while you line up multiple times for 30 minutes each. I've sometimes had to line up for 2 hours total (4 times) just to mail one thing. Once to ask "how do i mail this", once to ask for a pen (couldn't cut the line because a Karen wouldn't let me), once because I filled the wrong form, etc. Typical USPS experience
I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is normal for customers of the USPS. You can order stamps online, they have (collection) postboxes and even offer a pick-up service for parcels. At $0.73 to send a letter anywhere in the USA, that sounds like a pretty impressive offering to me.
> I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is normal for customers of the USPS.
GP said postal services are "universally accessible". So first, it doesn't matter is it's "normal", it matters if it happens at all. And USPS does not represent postal mail universally - I have never even seen a USPS building in my life and don't expect to. Is postal mail as universally accessible to a homeless man in Laos and a 5-year-old kid in rural India? I think it's ludicrous to claim that postal mail is "universally accessible" and displays a huge Western bias.
It's lining up multiple times. When I walk in with a box, I don't know how the hell to mail it, what to fill out, what the pricing vs. delivery ETA grid is so I can decide where I want to position myself on that curve, the different forms you need to fill to be on different parts of that curve.
I usually end up screwing it up a few times in the process too. I didn't realize that the free boxes they give you are only for 2 day service (and doesn't work for 1 day or 3 day). 1 day is a different box, 3 day is bring-your-own-box.
The pens they provide don't work, you have to line up to get a pen. You have to line up to ask a question. The workers are grumpy, the people in line are grumpy, I've had the experience that sometimes nobody will let you cut anything even if it's just for a pen or a piece of tape.
Oh and they charge you if you ask for more than about X of tape. It's a tricky dance. I think X is about 20cm. If you ask for 30cm, they will refuse even the 20cm and ask you to buy 300cm, which entails getting in the 30 minute line again (so the actual cost of the tape is 0.5 * your hourly consulting rate, so if you're a software engineer paid $100/hour of stocks and $100/hour of equity, that'll be a $50 roll of tape plus $30 of stock assumimng Trump just announced more tariffs). If you ask for 15cm, they might give you 20cm for free. It's tricky. I wish there were a sign that said "free tape: <=20cm" or whatever the actual number is, in front of each employee's desk.
Which reminds me, the actual number also seems depends on the mood of the USPS employee, so you also need to carefully watch your position in line so that you try to get yourself in front of the happiest employee. If the grumpiest employee is almost done with their previous customer, you have to fake needing to fix something really quick and let someone ahead of you in the line so that they get the grumpy one and you get the happy one. Or you can try to estimate the processing time of the few people ahead of you in line by eyeballing the complexity of shipping whatever they are holding, and time your place in line to be in front of the happiest employee when it gets to you. That way you are more likely to get more free tape to seal your box.
You also need to think about how to keep them happy. That usually involves some small talk. More small talk gets you more tape. Weather is a good safe topic on the east coast, because you can commiserate the bad weather with the USPS employee, but in California the weather is always good, so it doesn't make for good small talk, and the USPS employee might be at risk of going from happy to grumpy because they'd rather be outside.
This is some other issue, perhaps untreated executive dysfunction.
I have seen people struggling to complete tasks at post offices and banks, queuing multiple times unnecessarily, being afraid of choosing the wrong options but not doing any research, etc. They don’t take the basic steps that the others in line do to make their visit work.
If you have this much difficulty mailing a package I think your consulting rate should be a lot more than $200 an hour.
Shipping quotes are trivial to get online. It's also easy to print shipping with pirateship.
USPS picks up packages for free with your regular delivery.
I find your experience at the post office weirdly fascinating. Yeah, I am a strange guy.
I mean it is the fallback method. The solution for the "I never heard of this internet thing, or something else is preventing me from finding the licence online" problem.
Almost everyone will just use their search engine to find this page: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html
What can you do to serve the licence to those who can't or won't do that (for whatever reason)? I think it is hard to find something more universally accessible to serve that edge case.
You describe your story of how sending a letter went to you, and I admit it sounds like a bit of a pain. But you managed to do it. And by the sound of it you were totally novice at it. (didn't even bring your own pen!) Someone can do the same thing you did anywhere from Nairobi, McMurdo, Pyongyang, or Vigánpetend.
It is not "universally accessible" in the "easy and comfortable" sense. It is "universally accessible" in the "almost anywhere where humans live you can access this service" sense.
I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time.
I have multiple computers and phones, I thought that was the interface to the post-2000 world.
I do have paint, but that's a little clumsy.
I grudgingly own a box of BIC pens now, but ... It's like requiring people to own a horse to do something these days. And in past experience during school days, those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something), before I use even 5% of one of them.
I realize this all probably sounds very silly to someone born before 1980 but ... yeah it's just the reality of the world, I don't normally need pens to do anything, and am used to pens being provided in the rare occasions I need to sign a receipt or something, and usually I just end up drawing a cat on the signature line.
> I realize this all probably sounds very silly to someone born before 1980
I was born after 1980 and I think you're beating a dead horse, here. You're conflating accessibility with convenience. Not just with this comment, but others you've made in this thread.
> those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something), before I use even 5% of one of them.
Grab the pen by the end opposite the nib, give it a good shake for a few seconds, lick the nib, scribble on a scrap piece of paper until it starts writing again. Problem solved. You can't resurrect a dead laptop or computer by licking and shaking it (at least I've never succeeded in doing so).
Oh, i absolutely get you! Was not intending to pen-shame you in any way. Just used it to illustrate that the postal process worked (eventually, and with a lot of inconvenience) even though you were not best prepared for it.
But i have been exactly where you are. We were having a book club and trying to vote on the next book to read, and turns out none of us out of twenty literature loving people had a single pen on us. So yeah, that is for sure the current reality.
> usually I just end up drawing a cat on the signature line.
Thats awesome! Do the they accept it usually?
> those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something), before I use even 5% of one of them.
No, the ink does not dry. What happens is that the ball gets stuck if it is used too infrequently. This is solved by rubbing it against paper, or even better something rubbery. The underside of most people’s shoes works well for this. Just last week I used a Bic that was at least 30 years old. These things are very dependable.
> I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time.
I find this mind-boggling.
I immediately came up with a parallel -- "they wanted me to walk to the counter but I do not own shoes."
Which took me to the universe of Pixar's _Wall-E_ and now I can't help but imagine that the subset of "people born after 1980" are helpless in their floating chairs and apparently I am aberrant because I learned to walk, and that makes me old.
If you're talking about packages via USPS, you can use print + pay & drop boxes for anything that fits.
https://www.usps.com/ship/online-shipping.htm
If you're talking about letters, the innumerable blue drop boxes.
The task is sending a letter, not a parcel.
You buy the stamps (from the post office, another shop with opening hours you prefer, or online), sick one on the envelope and put it in a mailbox.
Overcomplicating everything so you can grumble on the internet isn't required.