A couple of weeks ago a Route Check team came to my post office to save the entire Postal Service. Armed with clipboards and coffee, they stated that the Postal Service was in dire straits, and that their route checks were part of a major effort to save the day, or else "we'd all be out of jobs." They came to Dallas from as far away as Arizona and northern Arkansas (near Missouri).

Well, the route checkers came and went, and it was up to our Station Manager and a limited duty carrier who cuts paper dolls all day to adjust the routes. (The Station Manager's experience at carrying mail, according to her, was "brief." The limited-duty employee hasn't carried mail in many years.)

The carriers had heard the route checkers found enough undertime to eliminate three routes out of our 34. Good for the route checkers, or so they thought. The Station Manager and LD carrier spent the past week adjusting routes at the CC (Command Center, or was it CiCi's Pizza?) They came back today with the results!

CAUTION: If you were part of the Route Check Team that checked the Lakewood Post Office in Dallas, Texas several weeks ago, read further at your own risk of a stroke or heart attack.

The Station Manager and LD carrier didn't cut three routes, didn't cut two, but cut only one route down from a full route to an auxilliary. Yes, the entire route check process yielded only about three hours worth of savings. And it wouldn't have been even that, except for my route and another route has some apartments torn down that are being rebuilt, and those three-hours worth will be added back sometime later this year or early next year.

But the Station Manager and LD carrier did make some adjustments. In fact, they swapped some territory among routes. In fact, they swapped a lot of territory among routes. Here's how they did it. My route is the northernmost route and it has about two-hours worth of apartments missing for the moment (torn down to be rebuilt.) So they started at the top of the map and added two hours from the route below me. Then that route, which lost two hours from the top, gained two hours from the route below it. This continued down many routes until it got to a route that went no-bid, and this route was made into an auxilliary route. (This was done so that no one would lose a route and cause a partial rebidding of the station.)

So after it has all been said and done, after all the route check expenses, after all the adjustments at the CC, the net result is: 1) Virtually no change in base hours 2) One route was cut by several hours, making it an auxilliary 3) No loss of carriers or staffing.

Here's some of what the Postal Service lost: 1) Clerks will need new scheme training 2) Address databases must be updated 3) Carriers must learn new routes 4) Mail will be coming to the wrong routes for many months because many routes lost two hours and gained another two hours from another route. (Perhaps they could have left the routes the same and saved everyone a lot of time and trouble.)

Overall, I hate to see the Postal Service be so inefficient and cost itself so much money. Hopefully, one day, the Postal Service can come up with a way to adjust routes that is both efficient and fair to both carriers and the USPS.