The United States Postal Service has a few problems just in time for Christmas.
As it turns out, sending a Christmas present to Germany is more difficult than crossing the Maginot Line.
I must begin by saying that I have worked for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in the past and therefore can freely gripe.1
North Dakota Senator Hoeven has long been trying to draw attention to the increasingly abysmal mail service to rural North Dakota—and I suspect equally abysmal service anywhere in rural America—but without much success. USPS budget cuts mean very few rural towns have a post office, and if they do, like the one in the small town where my parents live, it’s open for about 5 minutes on weekdays.
My parents also don’t receive rural mail delivery; we’ve always had to use a post office box, which has made it fun when shippers won’t deliver to a post office box but don’t recognize the rural 911 address as valid because it’s not in the USPS valid address system. Don’t even get me started on how many times my parents’ mail arrived so late that the bills came in after their due dates, and they were hit with late fees.2
Hoeven’s efforts, whatever they were, changed nothing.
The USPS, on a whole, is on a downward trajectory. We can’t Make America Great Again if we can’t deliver our mail and provide this service. First class stamps went up as service went down, fussy machinable mail rules were put in place assuring you that unique mailings were less likely because of expense even as envelopes torn in half increased. Priority Mail was expanded even though the system wasn’t really capable of prioritizing more mail and provide detailed tracking. The USPS brokered nonsensical deals with Amazon highly favorable to Amazon. The non-profit I worked with discovered piles of our postcard mailings had been dumped in a street by a carrier, and in other years were consistently spit out of the sorting machine as a reject despite thousands going through without a problem. Changes in shipping costs based on box sizes gutted small businesses trying to ship products and compete with Amazon, making shipping shockingly expensive for a box even an inch beyond the specified diameters.
It’s a long and perverse list of decline for a federally provided and necessary service in which legal documents traverse, postmarks serve legal functions, postal authorities can arrest people for abuse of the system, and much of the nation’s consumer spending rests.
But by all means, let’s clog it full of special cheap rates for junk mailings and charge grandma nearly $1 to send her Christmas card, yet again proving we will federally subsidize anything in a roundabout way as long as Ye Olde Taxpayer takes it in the backside.
By all means, let’s dump services like money orders and passports (a State Department function) into the list of provided services at the post office already choked with problems just because they’re federally related, even though, for example, the local post office is woefully understaffed, and taking one person off the desk to deal with passports has created hour-long wait lines that stretch down the hallway and almost to the door.
If you can’t provide the main service you’re there to provide—mail and package delivery—you don’t add more peripheral duties! People can’t access basic mail services without hours of waiting, headaches, and frustration, but by golly they can get a passport for their next cruise.
And somewhere around 2020 or 2021, those magical years when everything broke, the USPS surprised us all by showing us that indeed, they had not reached terminal velocity but still had much room to pick up speed in their decline.
This is when I stopped sending packages overseas, ending years of a Christmas tradition of sending to a beloved former exchange student from Germany. The changes and requirements with the customs forms, the costs—it had become too much. I felt bad about it, but that was the reality. I stopped sending out my handmade postal newsletter because the postage prices were too high. I struggled with setting up an online shopping option on my website because Amazon has trained people to want cheap stuff with no shipping, and the shipping costs are ridiculous; anything I sell online, I barely cover costs and don’t even hit what I’d call a reasonable wholesale price.
This year, however, I decided I should try to send something to my German sister. After all, she continued to send me lovely things she’d gotten in the Christmas markets and delightful chocolate advent calendars. Surely I could do something.
I did do something, taking a step forward. So did the USPS, pushing me two steps back.
I went to the USPS website and looked up all the international shipping and customs rules, carefully reading to make sure I complied with regulations. They recommended I fill out the customs form online instead of doing so at the post office to make things easier and more accurate. I measured and weighed the box, inputting that on the form. Nearly an hour later, after trying to categorize things like “cotton woman’s scarf” and “chocolate candy bar” and “stuffed toy” into proper complicated tariff categories and subcategories, with frequent warnings that some items in those subcategories may be restricted, I finished. I clicked the button, and the website generated a tidy PDF, which I printed out. I verified all instructions to be sure I had done it right.
Then I went to the post office.
The thing about Walt Disney World is that, at least after waiting a long time in line, there’s some joy at the end. This was not to be the case. The line was long, but I had my box, the label, and my own tape. The box was sealed, but I wasn’t sure if the label had to go in a special envelope or could be taped on.
The first clerk told me to tape it to the top of the box, so I did. Then she scanned the barcode from the customs label I’d printed, took the box, rang me up for the sheet of very cute stamps celebrating 250 years of the USPS delivering mail, and said that was it. I only owed for the sheet of stamps.
“But I have to pay for the postage on the box,” I said. “It’s going to be about $30 based on what the website told me.”
“No, it didn’t come up as requiring postage,” she said.
I was pretty sure the US had no agreement with Germany that mail was shipped for free, given the Great Tariff Wars, so I shook my head. I hoped that by scanning that barcode, she hadn’t triggered an error in the system or, knowing the sleek USPS system, a missile launch at North Korea. “No, I never paid anything. This is just the paper customs form done digitally. This isn’t a paid label.”
After 15 minutes, during which the line behind me grew, and I started feeling frantic, the postal clerk next to me told me to step out of line, and she’d help me when she was done with the gal currently at her counter. The first gal passed the sheet of stamps to her so I would buy them with that transaction. I stepped out of line and waited ten minutes before being waved up to the counter. We started the process again.
The lady scanned the bar code again. I felt bad for the folks in Pyongyang.
Nothing. She muttered some things. Scanned the barcode again. There were going to be no survivors in N.K. by the time this was over. She began tapping various things on her screen, aggressively, muttering this and that, scanning now and then, furrowing her brow, asking if I was sure I hadn’t paid online, if I was sure I had done this correctly.
“Yes, I followed the instructions on the USPS website.”
“I’ve never been on it so I don’t know what’s there.”
Huh.
More poking and muttering until she finally sighed. “It’s not working. Take this customs form, and you’ll just have to fill it out by hand, and we’ll try that way.”
I got out of line, no doubt to the thrill of the people waiting, and having lost the joy of the Lord by that point, began doing some muttering of my own. I filled out the paper form, mentally listing several points of training weakness the USPS had for its employees that I would willingly suggest to superiors if they were interested. Then I had to wait again, all the while listening as the three women clerks discussed how weird it was that things weren’t working.
Weird is not the word.
Finally, a different clerk waved me up. I handed her the box and the form I’d filled out by hand. She looked at the form taped onto the box, mentioned these were supposed to go in an envelope, thought for a moment, and began poking at her screen. She scanned the code and shook her head with a sigh. “This form is fine. I need to show them how to do this. We don’t need that manual form you filled out.”
She then began poking and doing some calculations, possibly solving the Riemann hypothesis, until she paused. “What is this state you have on here?”
“She lives in Schleswig-Holstein, but it didn’t print the whole thing.”
Let’s just say that it is regrettable that Salem Sue, the world’s largest Holstein cow, is so nearby because that added more time to the transaction in confusion and discussion.
After a few more minutes of poking and adjusting various things—much like a gate agent at the airport when you ask where the restroom is and 40,000 keystrokes later she tells you—she brought up the screen where I had to say there were no lithium batteries, liquids, explosives, murder victims, melatonin, absinthe, and whatever else.
Then came a strange screen.
“Huh,” she said.
No God, please have mercy on me, a sinner, I thought.
“It says here that your recipient may have to pay $34 at pickup for customs fees,” she said. “It doesn’t say she will for sure, but just that she might. Usually, when they are marked as a gift, this doesn’t come up, but…”
“She has to pay to pick up her gift?”
“Possibly.”
“Well, that’s not a very nice Christmas gift.”
“Do you still want to send it?”
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, but in the meantime, I have given more than two hours of my life to package, prepare, and attempt to mail this small box to Germany, and surely you would forgive me if I leapt across the counter and—
“I guess. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Do you still want the sheet of stamps?”
Let’s see. Do I want to spend $16 on a sticker sheet celebrating 250 years of mail delivery when the reality was that mail delivery really only made it to about 237 years? No. No, I did not.
In that moment, I felt very like when the USPS Hallmark-style Christmas TV commercials popped up and I yelled from my La-Z-Boy, “Why the heck are they wasting our money on advertisements when they have a friggin’ government monopoly! Who’s their competitor?! They have a budget problem! We aren’t fooled! These commercials suck.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll skip the stamps today.”
“I’m so annoyed right now!” I said as I slammed the car door on the truck nearly an hour after we got to the post office, burning up my friend’s ears with my rant. “We can put a man on the moon but we can’t get a box to Germany. We can create self-driving cars but can’t get letters delivered.”
I wasn’t done.
“Why can’t Elon or DOGE or someone figure out a way to take a hammer to USPS carburetor and figure out how AI or something could fix our broken mail delivery system?!” I griped. “Private delivery services do better. I guess it’s time we figured that out.”
When I first moved to Bismarck years ago, there used to be a super handy kiosk you could use to mail a package. You placed your box on the ledge, and the kiosk weighed it. You entered the address, selected your shipping preference, answered a few questions, and paid by card. It printed a label, which you stuck on the package and then dropped in the outgoing mail. It was so convenient.
They got rid of it.
I mentioned this as we drove away, speculating on why they got rid of it. “I get that it was probably security, and no one wants to show an identity card for security reasons, and it’s the start of the beast system and whatever else, but can we not just have more automation and better service for the postal service in this, the 21st century?!”
When I got home, I messaged my German sister, explaining what had happened.
“A box of items not worth $30 has been sent to you for $30, and you may need to pay an additional $30 to pick it up,” I informed her. “It would have likely been more efficient and cost-effective to have gone to the moon and slingshot the package to Germany than what I just went through. Merry Christmas.”
This may be the last box I send, holding out hope that the Lord returns soon, smites the postal system for the evil thing that it is, and that, in all eternity, nary a customs form will be necessary for His kingdom, which is united and eternal.
In the meantime, I’ll need some forgiveness. Because I said quite a few words.
I was a seasonal worker, working in six-month chunks because they wouldn’t allow hiring new employees, but were fine with seasonal workers. I worked the night shift at the 583 sorting/boxing facility, off-loading the trucks that came in from Fargo and Grand Forks, sorting, lifting, hauling, tossing, dragging, and then, around 4 a.m., loading the vehicles of the carriers going to the ZIP codes in the 583 region for local sorting. We then shifted to 58301 sorting and boxing so the mail was ready by opening at 8 a.m., sometimes working the counter. I would wake up between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. for the hour drive south, often in winter under the Northern lights and dodging moose on the highway. I’d get home around 9:30 or 10 a.m.
I don’t blame the local PO. Years ago they decided to bottleneck all mail sorting in larger cities instead of sort for top level, then sending it out to the three-digit ZIP main centers to sort for all ZIP codes under them. That meant all mail I send to my parents has to go to some city sort, then back to North Dakota. It takes longer to get to them than sending to another state in some cases. Saved money, terrible service results.