Endangered rural post offices get a reprieve

(WASHINGTON) — The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service sought Wednesday to tamp down concern over wide-scale cuts, revealing it will seek to keep thousands of rural post offices open with shorter hours.

Service expected to start cutback in August tha

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion, the financially struggling agency says. In an announcement scheduled for later Wednesday, the service is expected to say the Saturday mail cutback would begin in August. (MORE: U.S.

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion, the financially struggling agency says. In an announcement scheduled for later Wednesday, the service is expected to say the Saturday mail cutback would begin in August. (MORE: U.S.

I'd like to read this Monocle article on how the Swiss postal service is successfully reinventing itself as "a global media and technology company," as that appears to be what our Postal Service wants to do. Apparently, there's a lot of opportunity at "the intersection of data networks and the old-fashioned letter routes" and the Swiss have tapped it.

Postal van in Sundsvall, Sweden (wikimedia)

A few blocks away from my apartment, there's a store that Yelp users describe as “dirty,” “disgusting,” “horrible,” and “saturated with bitterness.”  Yet they are still in business, and probably will be for a long time to come.  What type of establishment could have their customers routinely express such deep rooted frustration, and still get away with it?  The local Post Office, of course. At some point, we have all probably thought about doing something like what Michael Richards' character Kramer tried to do on Seinfeld - get out of the system, permanently.

New York Times  -- "With the United States Postal Service facing insolvency, and one of the postal workers’ unions hiring consultants on business restructuring, it is looking toward Europe for new operating models, even though American legislati