Getting Our Priorities Straight

Good morning to everyone in the wonderful world of WYMOP!

We had a Service Talk at the Post Office the other day. To understand just what your own letter carrier has to deal with, it might help if you try to read the following out loud:

“It has come to our attention that the public is sometimes confused by the services that we offer here at the Postal Service, namely the names of said services, as opposed to similar services offered by our competitors here in the delivery service industry, who have apparently selected simpler service names. We at the Postal Service have selected certain services whose names cause said confusion to run through a re-naming scheme in order to make these services more accessible to the public and eliminate some of the aforementioned confusion.

Now, the services selected for this scheme are at the moment referred to as Priority Mail and Express Mail. Priority Mail, as you all know, is an attempted two-day delivery, though actual delivery in two days is not guaranteed. Express Mail is our next-day delivery service, by noon or 3pm depending on the service purchased, and that next-day delivery is guaranteed, and is actually the only guaranteed delivery the Post Office offers.

This is apparently confusing to the people purchasing the services, so we have decided to simplify the system as follows:

Priority Mail will no longer be referred to as ‘Priority Mail’, but will be split into three separate services: Priority One-Day, Priority Two-Day and Priority Three-Day mail. The price for each priority package posted will be the same across the board, that is, there will be no dollar difference per Priority, no matter the delivery. The difference will be in the distance: the person will purchase a particular priority based on the distance between the sender and recipient. All of these delivery times will be attempted, and there will still be no actual guaranteed delivery time with any of these services. Now, in reality this makes Priority Three-Day mail practically identical to First Class mail, which has always had an attempted three-day delivery window within the continental United States, but now it has a snazzier, simpler name: Priority Three-Day mail.

Express Mail will no longer be referred to as ‘Express Mail’, but as ‘Priority Express’. It will still be next day guaranteed delivery, for either noon or 3pm depending on whether it’s foreign or domestic, and will still be the only guaranteed service we offer.

So, to recap:

To avoid confusion, Priority and Express mail will now be referred to as Priority One-Day, Priority Two-Day and Priority Three-Day (which is practically the same thing as First Class mail) depending on how far it’s being mailed, and though we say ‘One-Day’, ‘Two-Day’ and ‘Three-Day’, those are all just guidelines and not guarantees, and Priority Express, which is guaranteed and distance is not a factor.

Priority One-Day. Priority Two-Day. Priority Three-Day. Priority Express.”

The Supervisor looked around with a smile.

“Are there any questions?”

Every hand in the room went up. The Supervisor pointed to one man who asked the one question that was on all our minds:

“What?”

The Supervisor looked at all our confused faces and walked away.

Any questions?

Talk to you later!

P.S.

And simply because yesterday someone said they were walking, but I thought they said they were Walken, here's Christopher Walken performing a dramatic reading that cracks me up every time!