Package Confound, Dumbfound, Not Found

By Mel Carriere

Working for the Post Office for 24 years now I have seen so many strange managerial practices, ranging from eyebrow furrowing questionable to complete shaking my head "do I really gotta do that?" that one would think the limits of my protective cocoon of incredulity could not be stretched any further.  But now, with the implementation of the Loading feature on the Mobile Delivery Device (Scanner), I believe we have reached the apex of deliberately executed inefficiency, so that further striving toward maintaining our reputation as the organization most likely to shoot itself in the foot and like it is not going to bear fruit that smells any fouler than this.

Parcel loading times were evidently not long enough, so somebody in a postal think tank (servicing the toilet in stall #3 just off the boardroom at 475 L'Enfant Plaza), had a brainstorm that smelled more like a brain fart and pretty much cleared the room.  Why don't we, sayeth this seat warming sage of starry-eyed senselessness, create a system that adds an unnecessary extra step for experienced carriers who already know  how to line up their parcels and don't need directives from a soulless, schizoid robotic voice to tell them what imaginary quadrant to toss a package into, while at the same time, as an added bonus, utterly confuses the diapers right off the newbies who have never carried that route before, making sure they will waste time they don't have, but we like to pretend they do, crawling through a tangled mess of haphazardly thrown parcels in the back of the LLV and frequently backtracking.

If the objective here was to create a system to assist the bewildered CCA to sidestep the time consuming parcel numbering process I could understand.  Except: 1) the underlying architecture of the plan is faulty, 2) whatever algorithm divies up the packages into their respective "zones" does not do so equitably and 3) the technology does not appear to have been tested, evidenced by the fact that it doesn't work in real life, only in postal fairyland.

1) - Architecture. Lincoln said that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and an adjunct of this timeless truth is that parcels divided against themselves cannot stand, but will certainly fall, tumbling over into zones where they do not belong, creating a great deal of avoidable backtracking and foul epitaphs that will make your granny's sainted ears melt.  

In other words, the load feature creates six imaginary zones, as much a figment of your imagination as the first down marker that you plainly see on your TV but the running back of your favorite team obviously cannot as he tumbles to earth three inches shy of it, bringing on the punting unit again.  Postal punting is painful.  I just said that because it sounded alliterative, not because it has any bearing on the conversation.  Anyhow, the point is that there are no physical barriers separating these zones, and as John Cougar said almost as famously as Lincoln, the walls keep tumbling down, causing zone 6 to bleed into zone 4 and 5, and even a lonely stray from zone 1 showing up at the bottom of zone 6 fifteen minutes short of quitting time, evoking much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

2) - Bad algorithm blues.  Another famous stone head of Mt Rushmore wrote that all men are created equal, but load feature zones were not created with any of these egalitarian principles in mind, because the distribution of parcels among the various zones appears to have been doled out as if a loaded dice is landing on the number six over and over again.  My route has over 900 deliveries, and about the last 400 fall into zone 6.  These last 400 deliveries require 32 starts and stops of the vehicle.  The load feature does not seem to recognize the importance of having my parcel ducks lined up in a row, which is to limit package mining through a teetering, untidy mass, a process that almost inevitably leads to a deadly cave in and corresponding foul language that is wasted because no one can hear you curse from the bottom of the parcel avalanche. Especially not your grandmother, whose unblemished eardrums were already fried in step one. Repeat process 31 more times.  Furthermore, this behemoth zone that has been gerrymandered into Leviathan status by the scanner's secret software system towers like the Himalayas over Death Valley's Badwater Basin, creating an enormous ripple in the space time continuum, an event horizon over which parcels tumble and disappear, only to reappear later at unexpected times and inconvenient places.

3) - Twisted Technology.  Another man who failed to make the cut for Rushmore, but got honorable mention on the hundred dollar bill and also, quite appropriately, was appointed first Postmaster General, once said that "The bitterness of low quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten." 

Not too many Benjamins were spent on this Load Feature project, I believe.  One gets the feeling it was conceptualized on a bar napkin over the course of a drunken weekend, then rolled out still hungover on Monday.  My basis for this assertion is the persistent prevalence of the "package not found" error message. Instead of spitting out a zone like it is supposed to in these situations, the scanner insists that it can not find the package, leading to a lot of pointless metaphysical speculation.  Packages imprint upon letter carriers like orphaned baby ducks.  They are definitely there, we can see them, we can hear them quack, but the scanner insists they are not there at all, not just once in a while but repeatedly.

The first time I used the Load Feature (not by choice), I was left with a half dozen not found, I suppose you could call them orphaned milk carton packages, that I smugly and self-righteously ran back to the clerk's, thinking I would bash their little function four skulls in with them for having missed arrival at unit scans.  This would have been very satisfying and a lot of fun, but every single one of the not found packages turned out to have an arrival at unit, and no one had a clue why they were showing up as "not found."

Everybody is still clueless.  The system still sucks.  I have to ask what good is this L feature to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of CCAs if they still have to haul back several not found packages into the office to write relay numbers on, even though they (the packages not CCAs) are hiding like an elephant playing peek-a-boo behind a flagpole?

And how does a letter carrier, CCA or regular alike, respond to this pimpled prom date of a poorly planned, shoddily executed parcel loading system?  Do we fight to fix it or silently accept it?  Do we dissent or consent? Do we acquiesce to cluelessness?

In postal land we know we get paid to do stupid stuff, so we will pretend to be wise in going along with the program, even though we are really just too numb to care. An English bard, obviously married, who certainly would have his face chiseled into Rushmore had he lived in Virginia or Illinois instead of Stratford upon Avon, admonishes us in closing with these words of wisdom from Richard III - "Dispute not with her she is lunatic."