Because when you do you find out it’s essentially a cluster fuck.

My latest two odysseys with the United States Postal Service include one where I shipped an item, and one where an item was shipped to me.

In the case of the former a 3 day delay was inserted into the process by a sort facility in Greensboro, NC. Just so happened those three days were on fin de semana or Weekend. I told the USPS CSR it sure like they shut down shop for the weekend. She insisted that they didn’t so I asked then what could be the cause for the item to be 250 miles from the destination and just sit there for the better part of three days? That was an entertaining conversation in which it emerged that Priority Mail 3 day is a best effort, no real guarantees but it IS fully tracked.

Now the latter – a pair of clippers for plants and flowers from Amazon. I check the status on Amazon, it was supposed to be delivered yesterday but I check the status and I see Undeliverable – invalid address.

But better – the item had gone through full sort – got into my local post office, went through secondary sort and got put on the truck for delivery. So the address label had to fly to get through that.

But talking with the local Post Office – the other factor emerger – the USPS uses a fuck ton of temporary workers. So it’s entirely likely that my item had a munged label where the ZIP+4 was present and the track number was there so it just slipped through the system.

But here’s the thing – that track number and zip code are enough to deliver the package.

USPS doesn’t do themselves any favors by putting all the information they do on tracked items. Because that’s how I surmised this whole thing.