A package is mailed from Wisconsin to North Carolina. Five days after it is mailed from Wisconsin, it departs Des Moines Iowa. Meanwhile, the postal service web site predicts that it will be delivered yesterday. This seems optimistic at best.

I texted this information to the package sender. When I gesture-typed “USPS” on my Android phone, the Google keyboard suggested that perhaps I meant “Idiots”. I know that’s based on nearby positions of letters in the qwerty arrangement, but somehow it felt appropriate given that for years now they have been unable to note that if an expected delivery date is in the past, it is no longer a reasonable expected delivery date and perhaps they could annotate that. “Delayed” perhaps?

Cristian Gafton August 08, 2015 20:42

My guess is they ran short of the COBOL programmers needed to implement such a complex feature. Also, probably senior project managers needed to write the full specification for implementation are also in short supply. And finally. Congress must enact a law to allow this change and a bipartisan commission needs to approve it.

Michael K Johnson August 08, 2015 21:26

It occurs to me that you might have far more knowledge of the details of interfacing with USPS systems and people than I do. Wouldn’t take much.

The package arrived recently in Greensboro, and when it was scanned in there they removed any expected delivery date, and changed the status to “In-Transit, Delayed” so clearly their system triggers only on package scan events.

They are striving for the Captain Obvious award: “The package is delayed and will not be delivered by the expected delivery date.” Belated caution: “An updated delivery date will be provided when available.” ☺

Cristian Gafton August 08, 2015 21:28

I guess that is their version of the very informative message dialog box saying “An unexpected error has occurred. [OK]”

Michael K Johnson January 18, 2016 06:19

They outdid themselves this time. Leaving the package in Des Moines for 5 days wasn’t annoying enough. This time they left it in Des Moines for 10 days, because they are trying to build business for UPS and FedEX.

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