Today is the first of the month. When I made my weekly trip into town, I noticed one bank and one credit union were especially busy. Traffic for one caused congestion on Paseo de Oñate. I assume it indicated how many people receive monthly checks or other cash vouchers.
It also was the first day of the first phase of New Mexico’s reopening. The Sonic on the south side of town was open for the first time this year. It had been doing some kind of construction maintenance earlier.
I also noticed the parking lot for the Laundromat was filled. I’ve been in enough of those to know people were too close to one another inside. Machines are three feet wide. While one spends little time at their maw, one has to sit somewhere while the machines run, and there never are enough chairs.
My stop at the grocery store was shorter because fewer people were in line. Panic buying is long gone, and people are back to their normal buying patterns or living on their reserves.
The visit to the local hardware to see what plants had arrived was equally short. Judging from lines in past years, most people shop in the local big box. The weather is as much a variable as the coronavirus in determining purchases. It’s too warm right now to put anything out. Those with experience are probably waiting to see what happens next.
In between those discretionary stops, I went to the post office. The Postmaster says volumes are down nationally and its losing money, again.
I haven’t noticed any great change in the mail I receive. I still get that weekly wad of advertisements which brings the local PO money, while increasing the trash in its bins. Today I also got three bills and five catalogs, along with a couple other advertisements.
It may be people are receiving fewer packages from Amazon. When I’ve been near the lobby, there seem to be fewer people with yellow cards indicating they have something to pick up. In normal times, one employee may get things for several customers at one time. Now, with only four people allowed in the lobby, that doesn’t happen.
Package volume, no doubt, peaks just before Christmas, and falls in the first months of the year as people pay off their holiday bills. With individuals working fewer or no hours, shopping for anything but food and diapers is a luxury that could affect mail volumes here and elsewhere.
I’m on social security. My income is the same every month, no matter what happens.
I buy three types of things on line. One are necessities that I can’t reliably find in local stores, like organic brown rice and computer printer ribbons. I order them when my current supply is getting low.
Once in a while I decide I want something new, say some leggings or something for the house. I usually look in local stores, and, when I don’t find what I want, go on-line. These purchases are erratic. They may be the volume whose decrease has been noticed by the Postmaster.
The third thing I buy are books. Again, these go in spurts, driven by whatever I need for research. I may go months without ordering anything, and then may buy a lot a one time. This year, I ordered some books in February, and many more about two weeks ago.
Some of the sellers on Amazon seem to be large companies with branches in several cities, but many are small bookstores and individuals selling things they’ve accumulated and no longer need. They may not be our local small businesses, but they are small businesses local to someplace.
I noticed this time, these smaller venders shipped the same day they got the order. Usually it’s the next day. That suggests more were at home, and, just as important, logged in to their computers.
The post office seems to be doing things that increase its costs. Most items I receive are shipped from a local post office to a regional center, and from there to Denver. The Denver distribution center then sends them to Albuquerque around 7 pm. They leave there around 5 am and usually are available to me around noon.
However, that doesn’t seem to be necessary. Two of the packages I received today bypassed that intermediate step and went from their regional centers in Missoula, Montana, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, directly to Albuquerque.
What was more costly were the two that went from their regional center to Denver, and then to Las Vegas, Nevada, to sit, before they were forwarded to Albuquerque.
Much of the processing is automated, and the weight of a book is trivial in an airplane load. However, all those unnecessary steps add unnecessary pennies to the cost of my shipments that, when aggregated, affect the total expenses of the Postmaster.
I’d rather those pennies went toward the underfunded retirement fund that pays our local postal clerks.
End Notes:
Sara Boboltz. "The Postal Service, On The Verge Of Collapse, Is Begging For Funding." Huffington Post website. 10 April 2020.
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