Re: Products made crappy for you

On Tue, 14 May 2024 11:10:20 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

On 5/14/2024 10:25 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 5/14/2024 6:13 AM, Roger Merriman wrote:

>
Even as postie with all the vans, we didn’t have a
dedicated mechanic but a
mobile one who’d come and service/repair them.
>
Due to its location, never had bikes as is common in the
Welsh Valleys ie
steep hills/roads.

 
For about five years, I had a newspaper route which I
delivered by bike.
 
Some years later, I had a summer job as a substitute
mailman, trudging the city while lugging a heavy sack of mail.
 
It occurred to me that I could put my paper carrier
experience to use and deliver the mail far faster by bike.
But nope, that wasn't allowed.
 

>
+1
It's in the very nature of bureaucracies and well described
by Hayek.  Oh by the way, nearly any question about the
mails may be 'proved' either way by citing different
sections of the DMM!

DMM is the Domestic Mail Manual.  Only 1,271 pages.
<https://pe.usps.com/cpim/ftp/manuals/dmm300/full/mailingStandards.pdf>

Incidentally, the term "mailman" was considered politically incorrect
and has been replaced by the gender neutral "mail carrier".  I suspect
the word "carrier" is there to remind enterprising employees that they
are expected to "know their place" and should only carry the mail.

One of my father's friends would tell tales of Pre-WWII Poland as a
Jewish letter carrier.  Such letter carriers were not employed or paid
by the national postal system.  Instead, they were paid with donations
by the recipient.  The problem that the Jewish letter carriers solved
was that the Christian post office employees could not read Hebrew or
more commonly Yiddish addresses.  There was also the ever present
racial discrimination by the gentiles (non-Jews).
<https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9789-letter-carriers-jewish>



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Jeff Liebermann                 jeffl@cruzio.com
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