Sunday’s WaPo has an item on new subdivision homeowners who are hopping mad about…communal mail boxes:
Across the nation, the U.S. Postal Service increasingly is delivering mail to communal cluster boxes as a way to keep pace with booming residential growth while controlling labor costs. The new strategy, aimed at new developments in fast-growing areas such as Clarksburg, Leesburg and Waldorf, saves the postal service time and money.
There are those who will take a certain grim satisfaction in forcing people to make the long trudge to the mailbox everyday (but how may will drive…think of the gridlock!). There are others who might, possibly, take satisfaction from seeing postal bureaucrats try to trim costs and increase efficiency (well, it is a start…however Eastern-bloc this approach may be).
Reading through the article, however, it never occurred to me just how important something as simple as an individual mailbox is to some people. Who knew?
I suggest, however, that if homeowners really want to get the boxes they feel they deserve, the best and surest way to do so is through postal competition. Break the Post Office’s hold over mail delivery (and mailboxes), and you can have whatever sort of box you want, wherever you want it. So long as you’re willing to pay for it.
