I was watching the evening news the other day because I was
feeling too optimistic. The lead story
was on a “brazen daylight robbery” of a U.S. Postal Service truck. I immediately thought to myself, what would
some fool want with a bunch of junk mail?
After all, that’s the Post Office delivers to my house.
Then I started to imagine the frightened postal worker who
was robbed. As the story unfolded, it
turned out that the postal service vehicle in question was an eighteen wheel
semi tractor-trailer truck which was stopped at a stop light. While the truck waited for the light to
change, the robber causally opened the rear door of the trailer and helped
himself, presumably, as the video of the incident did not show what precisely
the robber took, to a hand full of letters.
The report then cut to the Post Master General who stated
that he was “very disturbed by this crime” and that he would be offering a
$10,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of this criminal. $10,000 dollars? It was at that moment that I realized that
the $1,000,000 a day the post office is losing largely – yesterday’s lead new
story, is the result of simple
stupidity. Had the door to the trailer
been locked, say a cost to the tax payer of, em, er $2, the robbery would have
been thwarted. And the $10,000 would be
available to help pay the retirement of these brain-trusts working for the post
office.
