After receiving a few threats 20 years ago, I rented a post office box to put some distance between my house and my mail. I completed a short form, a card if I remember correctly, paid my rent, and received my key. That, of course, was before Osama Bin Laden scared the bejesus out of Americans, including the leaders of the U.S. Postal Service, and freedom was all too willingly subordinated to assinine levels of security (traveled by air lately?).
The USPS won’t admit it, of course, but it now views box holders as potential terrorists and criminals. Applicants for a post office box must provide almost as much information as applicants for a passport — and 20-year box holders like myself who still live in the same house as they did when their first rented the box now must provide the same ridiculous amoung of information every year. Last week, I found in my box this officious letter (PDF), which got me plenty steamed.
And I’m still steamed; indeed, even more steamed. There’s no need for this officiousness, this discourtesy, this level of suspicion, this paranoia. Osama Bin Laden’s dead. As much as anything else, the tenor of this annual demand for an unreasonable amount of information reminds me of the post office counter men who years ago refused, with great glee and malice, packages sealed with nylon fibre strapping tape because the outdated regulations required binding packages with twine or cotton string. It was how lowly clerks made themselves feel powerful.
The people behind the counter at the Kalispell post office have, for the last 20 years, generally been courteous and helpful, and I bear them no ill will. But up the USPS’s chain of command, the old officiousness, compounded by paranoia and too much love of security, has reappeared. It will drive away customers and create ill will at a time when the USPS needs all the friends it can make.
My PO box expires at the end of August. I won’t renew it. And I’m beginning to doubt that anything can renew the USPS.