Stress Test: United States Postal Service

By Mike Schuster Feb 04, 2009 5:30 pm

Should it win your stamp of approval, or is snail mail a thing of the past?

Comment

Once upon a time, the United States Postal Service couldn’t be stopped - not by rain, snow, sleet or hail. Now, with a budget collapsing under the weight of bureaucracy and a myriad of alternatives, Tuesday delivery is being threatened.

Will the USPS be able to beat back competitors and stem the decline in the use of snail mail, or will it go the way of the carrier pigeon? Minyanville gave it the stress test to find out.

Shipping standards	Scheduled arrival	Negative slang	Brief correspondence	Depiction in film

USPS: As good as you can expect from a civil servant who's as likely to be fired as a Supreme Court justice.	USPS: If it requires a signature, your 9-to-5 work schedule virtually guarantees you'll never get your package.	USPS: "Going postal." A popular catchphrase in the mid-90s thanks in part to the film Clueless, it has since followed the same trajectory as Alicia Silverstone's career.	USPS: Nothing says "Wish you were here" quite like a postcard...	USPS: The Postman. Workers are portrayed as bleak, vacant and emotionless. Highly accurate.
DHL It's a German-owned courier, so standards are presumably set with an iron fist.	Bike messenger: Usually delivers within an hour, unless a speeding taxi decides to intervene.	UPS: "Big Brown." Conveys a pretty awful mental image. There's just not a lot to work with there.	E-mail: ...Unless it's clickable and linked to pictures of the chambermaid bending over.	FedEx: Cast Away. Employees suffer from malnutrition and weird attachments to sports equipment. Will ruin water-soluble shipments.
Edge: DHL	Edge: Bike messenger	Edge: USPS	Edge: E-mail	Edge: USPS