All The World's A Stage....

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito. The views expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Association for Postal Commerce.

Did you ever get the feeling that you're just a marionette in someone's grand play? You get the sneaking suspicion that someone somewhere is pulling the strings, and is delighting as they watch you dance to an offbeat tune.

Well, that's the way many within the mailing community are professing to feel these days with each new word of dread and foreboding emanating from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Last month, it was the news about a possible $400 million end-of-fiscal year deficit. Last week, it was about a possible $2 billion deficit. Today, it's about a possible $3 billion or more deficit.

How else can you explain what's happening? How, for instance, is it possible for the management of a $65 billion enterprise to guess so consistently and wrongly about the basic finances of its business? Is it really happening as fast as postal management contends, or is there something else behind this onslaught of bad news?

People are beginning to wonder whether somewhere within the bowels of the Postal Service has decided that the best way to precipitate postal reform is by engineering a real (or, at least, the appearance of) a postal fiscal crisis. And if the crisis is real, is it really possible that the options that management believes it either has at its disposal or can ask Congress to provide are as lame as the options that are now on the table?

The Postal Service has told Congress that it sees no alternative but to freeze all plans for new buildings and facilities. The new word out of L'Enfant Plaza is that six-day delivery may have to go the way of the gooney bird. (Someone should remind the USPS that Congress requires six-day mail service, and that five days is not yet a viable option.) To make matters worse, the Postal Service has not taken postal rate payers hostage and are threatening to wring from them a king's ransom-worth of postal rate increases.

People are wondering. Is this a real postal crisis in the making, or simply a public relations gaffe?

Historically, mailers have figured prominently as players on the postal arena stage. Lately, however, they have been getting the feeling that they've been relegated mere bit parts, as someone else rushes off to center stage. If this is an act, it would have been nice if someone in the Postal Service's central casting office bothered to provide their bit players with a copy of the script.

The Postal Service's figurative decision to hold a gun to the head of Congress and its customers in the form of building freezes, post office closings, and five-day delivery is much less than a matter of manipulating marionettes on a stage. Rather, it's more as if the Postal Service thought that the best political play would be to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. If it was panic the USPS wanted, then it's gotten its wish.

If this is the way the Postal Service thought it best to call for reform, it shouldn't be surprised if the reform it gets is something quite different from what it expected. When you carelessly yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, you had better be prepared to get run over as the crowd rushes to exit.