No matter how many denials new Trump post office saboteur Louis DeJoy gives to Congress, Americans know whether or not their mail is being delivered on time. Whether it's needed medications, checks, parts necessary to keep a business up and running, or anything else, people notice when something they're expecting doesn't show up until days or weeks past the day they were expecting it.
Now a new wrinkle is being added, with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) apparently gaslighting customers with claims that packages are being held up at their own request. The Washington Post brings us that story, with USPS sending notifications to customers informing them that their packages are being held in the post office "at the request of the customer," when the customers aren't requesting any such thing.
Before anyone jumps to too many conclusions, this does not appear to be a real case of the USPS attempting to gaslight customers outright. Instead, it looks like a byproduct of a system that wasn't really set up to handle widespread delays of the sort we're now seeing. The Post cites postal workers' suggestions that the "held at request of the customer" notifications are being sent out falsely when mail carriers aren't able to finish their route before their shift is up. The message doesn't actually mean the customer won't be getting their package until they trudge over to the designated post office to collect it themselves; it just means it got stranded on a truck. It'll get there when it gets there.
Note that with the nixing of overtime, the problem of mail carriers having to abandon their routes when their designated time is up has been happening more frequently. Hence, the new surge in these messages.
What the USPS needs—and which some gutsy software engineer might want to implement so long as they have a new job lined up the next day—is a new notification informing customers: "Your package is being delayed on instruction of the postmaster general." If this is the new policy now, at least have the guts to own it.
