Safer?

The Post Office is far too maligned for the job they do. The great majority of the time, they take packages across the country in a matter of days for a fraction of what it would cost to send it some other way. They’re reliable, convenient, and bring the mail right to your door, leaving it in your mailbox without a signature whether you’re home or not.

But since TWA Flight 800 crashed into Long Island Sound, they’ve fallen victim to terrorist paranoia and refused to allow consumers to stick anything in a mailbox weighing over 16 ounces. The latest package returned to my home was a Priority Mail Envelope bearing the following label:

IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION
We regret that your mail is being returned to you because of heightened security measures. All domestic mail, weighing 16 ounces or over, that bears stamps and all international and military APO/FPO mail weighing 16 ounces or over, MUST be presented to a retail clerk at a post office.

This despite the fact that I used the Postal Service’s formerly convenient Flat Rate Regardless of Weight Envelope to mail my package.

Memo to the Postal Service: the point of the Flat Rate Envelope is to save consumers a trip to the Post Office. If we have to present it to a retail clerk, the flat rate isn’t a time saver.

Moreover, what is the point of handing something to a retail clerk? What is this heightened security? What is this highly skilled civil servant going to do to my package to make it safer for the esteemed letter carriers of the Postal Service to carry it across the country? Shake it? Sniff it? Put it through a bomb-detecting device? Ha!

Let’s assume for a moment that I was sending a bomb in my flat rate envelope. If my intent was to wreak havoc, wouldn’t I be a whole lot more effective at doing that by going into a post office and unleashing the kind of mayhem on the staff that their frazzled co-workers are already legendary for doing?

If I really did have a bomb, why would I leave it in an envelope sitting in the bottom of a mailbox on a city street? Some personal vendetta against mailboxes? And if I really did hate mailboxes so much, why would I even need the packaging? I’d just drop a bomb into the box without any return address at all.

But this is what our government is worried about. Rather than prepare for utterly predictable crises like New Orleans being flooded, attacks on our nuclear plants, or explosives at the cargo ports, the government is concerned that mail bombs be delivered directly to a retail agent at the Post Office.

So come on in, terrorists. Blow holes in our levees. Infiltrate our ports. Cut our electricity. Clog up our highways. Just don’t you dare try to mail a package over 16 ounces or take a backpack on the subway. Cuz we’re wise to you.