• JK (unregistered)

    Maybe I'm weird, but I just waded through a pile of comments about the horrible postal system without anyone pointing out just how blasted cheap it was.

    A fifty-cent stamp? If your time is worth more than minimum wage you couldn't walk the letter around the block for that kind of money. Now you're bitching about it not getting from SF to Chicago overnight?

    Sure, it's not perfect - but it is wonderfully cost-effective.

    JK

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to Maurits
    Maurits:
    Matt Westwood:
    The Nerve:
    Now that I think about it, I actually learned this lesson before in high school working at Dairy Queen. The manager insisted on a specific spelling of a promotion on the sign. The spelling was wrong, and when I put the letters up, I corrected it. No amount of arguing could convince her that spelling it correctly was better than "her way," though, and I had to go out and redo the job, spelling it incorrectly.

    I had that experience at age 10 when a teacher marked me down in a spelling test for "Belgium" not "Belguim". No amound of arguing with her could convince her it was actually spelt "Belgium", and she refused to look at the atlas I waved at her. I ended the day standing in disgrace outside the headmaster's office. Everybody else in the class kept very quiet about their own marked-down spellings.

    Matt Westwood: +5 points for sticking to your guns - what did the headmaster have to say?

    The Nerve: -5 points for backing down - what was your spelling, and what was hers?

    He sighed, shook his head: "You again." Left me where I was.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    Are you calling spammers the "direct mail industry"? Well then I have some other suggestions:

    drug cartels = recreational substances industry weapons manufacturers = peacekeeping utilities industry hired killers = thorough resolutions industry

    Can't see anything wrong with any of those. In a perfect world people wouldn't look down in snobbery on any of these essential services.

  • Loveknuckle (unregistered) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    Way back in my hand-to-mouth student days, Oral-B ran a promotion where they would give a free toothbrush in return for sending in two original UPCs.

    For whatever reason, they didn't require sales receipts for proofs-of-purchase and stupidly, the toothbrushes they sent back were exactly the same with UPC as the one sent to them. The only restriction I could see in the rules was that it was limited to one toothbrush per person at any address. You can see where this is going.

    I found a dollar store selling them really cheap, then sent in the UPCs, altering the name and address very slightly, like apt 123 vs #123 vs unit 123, Street vs ST, etc., each time so that they wouldn't match exactly in their database, but would be delivered okay.

    When I got the toothbrushes, I resubmitted the UPCs from those toothbrushes and got half as many back, and kept repeating, until eventually until the lone brush arrived. Postage wasn't too bad in those days, so I ended up with 2n-1 toothbrushes for like n/2 investment.

    Having a high quality unused clean toothbrush around could make or break whether a certain someone would stay the night ;) As long as she didn't see how many other toothbrushes there were, then that might look creepy...

    This is a lie.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to HR
    HR:
    Who is John Galt?

    (* shrug *) who knows? -- (Atlas)

  • Loveknuckle (unregistered) in reply to oheso
    oheso:
    OldNews:
    Why is it so slow within the same country if it is so quick to cross the border?

    If it's being sent to another country, we don't care if it contains anthrax.

    LOL!

  • KD (unregistered) in reply to Ed

    Yeah that's not true at all. I use royal mail about 4 times a week and I almost always receive things within 1-2 days.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to Geert
    Geert:
    MmmBop:
    “You didn’t include a photo for the company president’s profile, so I used one I found on Google”
    Actually -- that particular example occurs very often, at least at my clients. 'Oh, we don't have a picture of that <insert-object>? Well, let's find one on Google then...'

    There's another way??

  • zolo (unregistered)

    Thanks for the unicorns, my 4 year old daughter love them!

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I admit I haven't used the USPS in about 4 years, but has it really gotten that bad? The longest that mail ever took was 3 days, no matter where in the country it was sent. Local mail almost always arrived the next day.

  • João (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve

    There is a better way to handle such situations. You can report the issue to your boss, clearly stating the wrong behaviour and the manager's decision, asking for some kind of document (e-mail, comment in the issue tracking software, etc) you can use if the manager's boss shits on him and he blames you. This saved my ass several times.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Whatever happened to actually understanding your requirements? Personally speaking, I would be in big trouble if I had blindly implemented this requirement without questioning "so why do we have a requirement that explicitly insults users?".

    The practice of handing over a requirement spec for some code monkey to blindly implemement is utterly flawed. It's cargo-cult at best - implement what you see without ever trying to understand what you are implementing or why.

    I'm always questioning the requirements in the software I develop as avionics requirements are confusing even when they are correct.

    Not to mention what happened to reviewing a sample of printed data before it gets shipped?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    Anonymous:
    Whatever happened to actually understanding your requirements? Personally speaking, I would be in big trouble if I had blindly implemented this requirement without questioning "so why do we have a requirement that explicitly insults users?".

    The practice of handing over a requirement spec for some code monkey to blindly implemement is utterly flawed. It's cargo-cult at best - implement what you see without ever trying to understand what you are implementing or why.

    I'm always questioning the requirements in the software I develop as avionics requirements are confusing even when they are correct.

    Not to mention what happened to reviewing a sample of printed data before it gets shipped?

    That's interesting, I'm in avionics as well. I guess it's a slightly more disciplined area of software development given the safety critical nature of it all. We don't hire code monkeys and we don't offshore. Developers are expected to take ownership of their respective product areas and ensure that the requirements are appropriate and meet all end-user goals.

  • Ian B. (unregistered)

    It’s like there’s nothing you can do about the ending of that story. You can see it coming, and you just have to stand there.

  • highphilosopher (unregistered)

    Just call me Paul Harvey.

    "And Now, the rest of the story"...

    "Reggie slowly approached the suit wearing lizard with the extreme agility. After tracking rumors and stories he had finally caught up with the salesman who sold pre-release access. Slowly and gently he pulled the poisoned dagger from his cloak. Normally developers aren't known for their use of poison, but this WAS salesman after all. The manage to squirm out of the most difficult situations, so the poison was his ace in the hole. Just then, the salesman stopped. He thought he heard something. It was now or never for Reggie, so he leaped on the salesman with all the agility of a two legged badger..."

  • Gruntled Postal Worker (unregistered)

    I call "FAKE" on this article.

    This site, and similar such as 'not-always-right' are spoiled by people submitting made up stories.

  • (cs)

    If this story (including the punch-line) were true, wouldn't a large number of us have gotten this junk mail?

    Wouldn't people have thought it was funny, scanned it in, and now it would be all over the net?

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Marvin the Martian
    Marvin the Martian:
    The Nerve:
    You're kidding, right? Have you ever noticed how the US is about 20x bigger than the UK? I'm talking throughput here.
    What, there's more than a billion Merricans now?

    UK land area: 244, 280 km2 US land area: 9,629,091 km2

    Thus, US is actually 39 times the size of the UK.

  • The Slug (unregistered)

    It's perfect; definately a keeper! >;->

  • Design Pattern (unregistered) in reply to RBoy
    RBoy:
    ISO9001

    Who cares if it works right, just as long as you documented how it works.

    Who cares if it works right ... It's over nine-thousand!!!!!

  • Sarah (unregistered)

    Well for once at least Reggie has an answer available as right now he is the expert about 'the slugs' :).

    While it may not have been funny for the receivers or Reggie and his boss, at least it was very funny for us ^^

  • J-Dubbs (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve

    Actually the USPS is it's own entity and completely self sufficient.

  • TommyTuTone (unregistered) in reply to prionic6
    prionic6:
    The real FAIL is working at a place that sells personal data, most probably without consent or with swindled consent.

    Yes! Agreed!

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to HAL9000
    HAL9000:

    So, I wonder what would happen if I just left the mail I don't want in the mailbox with the flag up. Would it be returned to the original sender "postage due?"

    I tried that, except I don't have a flag. For several months, I would just pick out the useful items/magazines/bills/etc and leave the envelope-less sheaves of ads in the box. The mailbox eventually filled to the point where useful mail was being slightly damaged as the worker had to shove it in. Eventually all of the junk vanished, and I was given a note that I had to pick it up at the local station. The note also stated that if I didn't come in, all of it and anything else I received would be returned to the sender. When I went there, a supervisor scolded me for insolence.

    The USPS enables the wasteful and bad behavior of the physical spammers, but attacking the USPS doesn't solve the problem.

  • Brent (unregistered)

    I love the mom's reaction. This lol was a very real lol. Btw: I could not work for a boss that pulled a pre-release and did not inform people ahead of time. Not cool.

  • PinkyAndTheBrainFan187 (unregistered)

    Fuck me sideways.

    I literally laughed out loud at today's WTF.

    I'm not going to read the comments because they'll only bring me down. See ya tomorrow y'all!

  • (cs) in reply to Quijibo
    Quijibo:
    I have to say, this discussion by US citizens regarding their postal service makes for riveting reading for the rest of us.

    Thanks for sharing.

    You're welcome. After all, even we need a break occasionally from taking over the world.

    BTW, we've now have your real identity and location. The invasion begins tomorrow.

  • Marshall (unregistered) in reply to Wha?

    Australia Post is a government agency. It makes a profit. It runs its own courier company as well in direct competition to commercial operators and that makes a profit as well.

    Every letter that I've sent/received in the last 10 years (then checked) was delivered the following day. You can pay extra for guaranteed next-morning delivery ("Express Post") but you would only do that if you wanted to track it or have proof of delivery for legal purposes.

    What we don't have is the junk mail you describe - we get lots but "hand-delivered" by students and pensioners en-masse along with the local (free) newspaper and local ads and political fliers etc.

    As for size .. that's a furphy. You've got more money so use more machinery or are you saying that it is impossible to scale up mail sorting? We've got a much lower population density so it's that much harder to support the infrastructure needed for the transportation - you can't have it both ways.

    Maybe you should sub-contract us to teach you how to do it properly?

  • Polo Shirts (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    http://www.eightshop.com Polo Shirts

  • amet (unregistered) in reply to me

    A slug is an NSLU2.

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    I enjoy reading old (usually British) detective stories where a letter will arrive by "the morning post", and you can send a reply by the afternoon post, which will arrive at the receipient's house the next morning.

    I know that before the telephone was a common item, mail in cities at least here in the Netherlands was collected and delivered two or three times a day. So you could get a message in the morning, send a reply by noon and have a reply to that in the evening.

    You can also find this in works like Sherlock Holmes.

  • Foo Bar Bazil (unregistered) in reply to jspenguin

    http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/bastard.asp

  • Finn (unregistered) in reply to Loveknuckle
    Loveknuckle:
    This is a lie.

    The cake is a lie.

    [image] I tried looking for a cake related to Irish Girl, and this is what I found.
  • Finn (unregistered) in reply to J-Dubbs
    J-Dubbs:
    Actually the USPS is it's own entity and completely self sufficient.

    Correct. Except for the numerous privileges Congress gives it that greases the skids and prevents certain competition.

    I believe someone already mentioned the monopoly on 1st class mail.

  • Frisco (unregistered) in reply to yawn......

    The story was real. However, the embellishment provided by the creative writing crew at TDWTF (once again) pushed it over the edge of believability.

  • jeremy (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    DWalker59:
    I enjoy reading old (usually British) detective stories where a letter will arrive by "the morning post", and you can send a reply by the afternoon post, which will arrive at the receipient's house the next morning.
    You can still do this in the UK. Morning post usually arrives by 9:00am, afternoon post usually gets collected from the post boxes at about 5:00pm. So you can receive a letter at 9:00am and have 8 hours in which to post your response. If you use a first class stamp there is a 90% chance your reply will reach its recipient the very next day.

    I remember being quite amazed when, having arrived in London to look for work, I snailmailed a stack of CVs one afternoon - and started receiving phone calls around 9am the next morning. Admittedly this was 1995 (and I'm getting old because to me it seems like yesterday).

  • jeremy (unregistered) in reply to Veldan
    Veldan:
    It is never ok to think good things about Australia post. Getting a letter from one side of Sydney to the other has often taken me two weeks.

    As others had said, i could literally have walked there and back in that time. Let's not forget driving there and back.

    It gets even worse with AusPost international, where you buy the 3-4 days worldwide and they don't get your EXTREMELY urgent package to New Zealand (wow, so far....) for 4 weeks.

    That's because they're still waiting to find a Kiwi who's heading back home who can carry it for them...

  • dan (unregistered) in reply to Ed
    Ed:
    Steve The Cynic:
    The Nerve:
    My favorite part is how the USPS, once responsible for efficient interpersonal communication, has turned into a government-subsidized advertisement delivery service.
    The second part is common - this has happened to all postal services (well, all the three - US, UK, France - I've used, but...).

    However, I'm going to contest your assertion that the USPS was responsible for efficient communication. No. Definitely not. Any service which routinely takes nearly a week to deliver a letter less than fifty miles away is not efficient. (And the introduction in the late 80s of a "priority" service costing nearly ten times as much didn't help - this one only took 2-3 days.) Compare to the Royal Mail (now somewhat emasculated due to political ideology), which routinely delivers ordinary 1st class post the next day almost anywhere in Great Britain.

    Have you actually sent anything via 1st class recently? It takes up to a week: they downgraded it when they introduced 'Special Delivery' so that people would opt to pay even more to get things on time.

    That's why you hardly ever recieve parcels via Royal Mail anymore, it's almost always cheaper to use a private delivery firm once you factor in insurance and delivery speed. Someone wrote a great article about that kind of thing (Possibly either Spolsky or Atwood), but I've forgotten exactly who, so I can't post a link.

    Also, Second Class is now hilariously slow, you might as well walk to the recipient's house and give it them in person.

    Actually, last week, the item I posted one afternoon arrived the following morning. That's pretty good. They only delay or lose it if it's a tax return.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    The Nerve:
    Now that I think about it, I actually learned this lesson before in high school working at Dairy Queen. The manager insisted on a specific spelling of a promotion on the sign. The spelling was wrong, and when I put the letters up, I corrected it. No amount of arguing could convince her that spelling it correctly was better than "her way," though, and I had to go out and redo the job, spelling it incorrectly.
    I had that experience at age 10 when a teacher marked me down in a spelling test for "Belgium" not "Belguim". No amound of arguing with her could convince her it was actually spelt "Belgium", and she refused to look at the atlas I waved at her. I ended the day standing in disgrace outside the headmaster's office. Everybody else in the class kept very quiet about their own marked-down spellings.
    IMHO, such people, when in position of authority (supervisors/managers, teachers, ...) should be warned once, then promptly fired. At least these days you can pull out your phone and look up any word in an on-line dictionary.

    Obviously this whole "I'm stupid and I'll stick to it" phenomenon must have an explanation or two. I'd say people who act like this were badly punished for failures, perhaps at an early age. Instead of understanding that mistakes are made by everyone, top geniuses included, they believe in a fairytale and insist on propagating it. Bleh.

  • Andrew (unregistered)

    Obviously some attempt was being made to copy slug technology here. Since slug is more slug, snail mail attempt to steal.

    Why Slug more slug 1- Slug is so much light than snail who have shell to copy slug technology. 2- The snail use the shell because is a fucking faget. 3- snail got crush so easy, and you can give the slug to ur dog chew and it ll s 4- shell is MORE heavy than no shell. 5- some slug have internal shell because more evolved 6- Your cousin will not want to stay on your house to play slug. 7- If you trow the slug on the wall, the wall will go up. 8- Trow both on water and watch which will come up first. 9- slug at mate will make a slimecord. The snail will show dribble. 10- All slug are hermaphrodite. Snail is too but because faget 11 - slug is the name of a bullet. Snail means it is slow. 12 - Slug will eat carrion, slug dont give a fuck 13- slug didn't needed an upgrade. Slug is perfect

    (Yes, I know it's copypasta. Sue me, I think it's funny.)

    captcha: ratis (norvegicis)

  • anon (unregistered)

    "He knew less about the actual mail his family recieved than they did."

    It's 'received'.

  • Jaffa (unregistered) in reply to airdrik

    I let the telephone company have my name and address to go in the phone book, so it's OK for you to sell it to X number of junk mailers to send me whatever rubbish they like? Good grief, I hope you're not working at my local health centre!

  • Jaffa (unregistered) in reply to Murrican
    Murrican:
    Quijibo:
    I have to say, this discussion by US citizens regarding their postal service makes for riveting reading for the rest of us.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Who said the rest of you were allowed to read our Internet anyway?

    Tim Berners Lee and Alan Turing

  • dave (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve

    USPS isn't government subsidized. Junk mail is how they break even.

  • Jimbo (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Again a bit of a failed analogy, people know the difference between a car and a bridge. They don't ask IT people to fix their toaster just because it plugs into a wall like a computer.

    You, sir, have clearly never worked as in-house IT support. When I did, I routinely got asked to fix anything and everything that either plugged into a wall, or simply existed within five feet of a PC (squeaky/non-reclining/non-height-adjusting/non-rotating/etc office chairs being a VERY notable example of the latter).

  • (cs) in reply to Jimbo
    Jimbo:
    anon:
    Again a bit of a failed analogy, people know the difference between a car and a bridge. They don't ask IT people to fix their toaster just because it plugs into a wall like a computer.

    You, sir, have clearly never worked as in-house IT support. When I did, I routinely got asked to fix anything and everything that either plugged into a wall, or simply existed within five feet of a PC (squeaky/non-reclining/non-height-adjusting/non-rotating/etc office chairs being a VERY notable example of the latter).

    Ditto. Except I started giving the answer, "Is it running Linux, or at least some form of Unix?" whenever they asked if I could help them with something. Since my relatives didn't want to have Linux installed on their chairs, they left me alone before too long.

    Oh, and just to clarify: by anything that plugged into a wall, I mean I've been asked to assist with actual toasters. Including one that had caught fire (my cousin is an idiot) and burned until the fire department came out to shut off the breaker - and treat my cousin's electrical shock (see previous comment - fortunately for cousin, the sink was not close enough to directly water the toaster, and the toaster was on a wooden cupboard, so the shock only lasted until the bucket emptied.)

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