Post Office strategists: We can trick you into thinking the service is good

I don't think it's just coincidence that every time I go to the Newark Post Office there is a long line of customers waiting for a couple over-worked clerks. I'm all for a profitable postal service - as long as it appears to be a service and not another government-approved monopoly with government-approved annoyances as standard operating procedure.

No. I don't think this is a coincidence, not any of it. I think it really is deliberate, and here's why: An article in The Week, March 16, 2007 had this report:

"The United States Postal Service is tackling the problem of long customer wait-times by removing all the clocks from its facilities. The no-clock policy is ostensibly part of a 'retail standardization program,' launched last year to give the nation's 37,000 post offices a more uniform appearance. But officials admit they hope that without clocks, customers will be less fixated on how long they've been standing in line. 'We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock,' said a Postal Service spokesman."

I never looked for a clock at Newark Post Office. I have always sort of focused on the line of poor souls ahead. Twenty. Now nineteen. Eighteen. And like that, on and on.

Yes, you sly folks who dream up this crap, you're really tricking us with the clock gig.