I wish I’d had my camera first thing this morning so I would’ve have had a picture to put with this post. I was running errands first of the morning and one of those stops included the Post Office. Walking in, I noticed people with their boxes open but the people were just staring at the boxes which were empty.
“Ok…” I thought. “The mail hasn’t all been put out yet and people are waiting”. It happens.
Then I went to the counter and found a guy mad as hell because a government check hadn’t arrived today and as he so bluntly let everyone know, it is always here on the 1st of the month. The supervisor explained that all the mail had been put out already. She even double-checked for him and had the news greeted with several not so polite remarks.
Then it dawned on me. All these people by their boxes – waiting on government checks. On my way out, I let one lady know that the mail had been put out already so she wouldn’t keep standing there aimlessly. “Well, that can’t be.” She exclaimed. Again, I wish I’d had my camera because from the look on her face you’d thought I’d just told her they’d proven the world was flat after all.
Who knows what happened to the checks. Maybe they missed the truck. Post Office is cutting back. They actually removed the stamp machine from our post office and put up a sign that stamps could be purchased elsewhere. That makes a lot of sense right? And now they have just one person behind the counter instead of the two or three they use to have which of course is causing lines.
Maybe the government figured – like the rest of us often do when paying a utility bill or something when money is tight – that hey, they’d mail the checks in the afternoon instead of the morning and it’d still be mailed on time but be cashed a day late. The amount of savings that is to a government agency is in the tens of thousands easily by the time you start calculating interest they’re making.
This all occurred on a day when the State of California declared they no longer can pay bills and are sending out IOU’s. The Detroit school system filed bankruptcy because they’re only 700 million plus in debt. How does a school system get that far in debt anyway? Apparently, business math wasn’t being taught.
All this brings me back to the scene of people staring at their empty post office boxes this morning. I don’t mind people getting government money. Most people need it. But it makes me wonder, doesn’t it occur to people – especially in these times – that hey, just maybe that money isn’t going to be guaranted forever?
