So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[ChiTownScion]

The Christian Brothers of Ireland employed the same approach, veritas, veritas.

I'll guess: Brother Rice, or Leo?

Makes me glad that I had the Jesuits. That "do as you're told or we'll blister you" approach would have only gone so far with me. Some of the Jesuits tried it, but it clearly wasn't the party line by the late sixties, and those who employed it were regarded as dinosaurs by both students and peers.

 

[GHT]

I'll guess: Brother Rice, or Leo?

Makes me glad that I had the Jesuits. That "do as you're told or we'll blister you" approach would have only gone so far with me. Some of the Jesuits tried it, but it clearly wasn't the party line by the late sixties, and those who employed it were regarded as dinosaurs by both students and peers.

Our priests were of the Order of Saint Vincent de Paul, they were known as Vincentian Fathers. The Head was a reasonable and fair minded fellow, he didn't like corporal punishment, only using it as a last resort, and even then he always pulled the punch so that the slap was more symbolic. The deputy head though was a sadistic ba***rd. Six foot four and thoroughly mean and aggressive. He it was who meted out the corporal punishment, he relished it. But there was one priest who was so kind, he visited me in hospital with my schoolwork, I was in there for a long time following a serious hit and run. People are people, whether they wear a dog collar or not. The deputy head would have been the same sadist no matter what career he chose.

 

[Harp]

I'll guess: Brother Rice, or Leo?

Makes me glad that I had the Jesuits. That "do as you're told or we'll blister you" approach would have only gone so far with me. Some of the Jesuits tried it, but it clearly wasn't the party line by the late sixties, and those who employed it were regarded as dinosaurs by both students and peers.

Brother Rice. I admittedly was a discipline problem but the staff were too quick to mete out corporal punishment.
I later spent some time at Loyola but found the baccalaureate core both repetitive and restrictive; regency period
Jebbies seemed promising but a decided lack of convention eventually soured the proverbial first impression;
and Jesuitical philosophy seemed to stray a bit. And the Jebbies are tight with a buck.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I did a nice walkaround for two hours and when I reached home, I saw, that I forgot to close my door.

Luckily, I live in german smalltown, far from reality.

 

[Zombie_61]

The Universally Stupid Postal Service has done it again. Taking advantage of their "Cyber Monday" sale I purchased a cap through Village Hat Shop's website on Monday. Tracking shows the U.S.P.S. received it the next morning, and sent it north with an estimated delivery date of yesterday. Keep in mind, Village Hat Shop has four locations in the San Diego area and even the farthest one is only about 120 miles from our front door. So, on the day it was supposed to be delivered, was my new cap anywhere near our house? No. Instead, it was in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1,900 miles away, for no apparent reason.

 

[GHT]

The Universally Stupid Postal Service has done it again. Taking advantage of their "Cyber Monday" sale I purchased a cap through Village Hat Shop's website on Monday. Tracking shows the U.S.P.S. received it the next morning, and sent it north with an estimated delivery date of yesterday. Keep in mind, Village Hat Shop has four locations in the San Diego area and even the farthest one is only about 120 miles from our front door. So, on the day it was supposed to be delivered, was my new cap anywhere near our house? No. Instead, it was in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1,900 miles away, for no apparent reason.

The reason being that St. Paul is a sortation hub. Think of the spokes on an old bicycle wheel, where each spoke goes into the rim represents a delivery centre, where the spoke goes into the central hub represents the sortation centre. It might seem crazy that the collecting centre is just twenty miles or so from the delivery centre but the parcel goes all the way to the hub and back, but for speed of process, it's much quicker and simpler to barcode the package, scan it and dispatch it. every package going into the hub will be scanned and sent to it's delivery centre. Countries the size of the UK can do their overnight transportation by road, a continent size country like the US, relies on aircraft to transport their overnight trunking system.

I did like your translation of the USPS acronym. We have a company called Parcel Force that's commonly changed to Parcel Farce. And DHL is known as: Drop it, Harm it, Lose it.

 

[3fingers]

GHT my good man I fear you give USPS too much credit.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Of the major delivery services, I've had the least trouble with the USPS, the most with U Piece of S***, and FedWrex in between, to the point where if I have a choice between the three I'll take the Postal Service every time.

 

[tonyb]

My experience with USPS has been almost entirely positive. They have yet to lose or significantly damage any outgoing shipments (hundreds at this point), and the swag I order online almost always arrives on schedule or sooner. My friend the book peddler, who has sent out thousands upon thousands of shipments, reports pretty much the same.

But that’s for “tracked” stuff. When I lived at 311 17th Ave. in Seattle I once found in my mailbox a notice from a veterinary practice in Florida, and addressed to a recipient at 311 17th in some burg in Florida, informing that Rambo was due for vaccinations. That’s been more than 20 years ago. At present I’m still awaiting a piece of correspondence of some importance that was mailed from Arkansas on Nov. 25. Both the sender and I are now resigned to that piece being lost forever. Fortunately, everything contained in that lost envelope can be replicated, but doing so is a real inconvenience for both parties.

 

[Fading Fast]

Our experience - and we buy a lot of stuff on-line as it's cheaper than NYC prices and we also ship to our parents a lot of stuff - has changed dramatically over the past few years. USPS had been the cheapest (the standard boxes that you could ship via the ATM like machine were great - good prices, almost no lines), with UPS second and Fed-Ex being meaningfully more expensive. While our local USPS has nice tellers, the lines were (and are) brutal (if you couldn't do the ATM thing) and the tracking only okay. UPS was crowded but fast and Fed Ex had the shortest lines.

But in the last year or so, USPS prices have increased to the point where UPS is now cheaper and, since the lines are better, at UPS, we've all but stopped shipping out of USPS. Fed-Ex has become more competitive in pricing, but now the stores are a hassle where they have you basically doing all the work - putting in your info into a screen - but you still wait on line.

As to reliability, we've had very few problems with any of them, but USPS is terrible to get any info out of when there is a problem - UPS is pretty good with Fed-Ex being in between. That said, the USPS packages that have had problems have shown up pretty quickly, but the tracking is so bad (once something goes awry) that we've gotten updates that our package is coming two weeks after it's already been delivered.

So, right now, UPS seems to be winning on price, convenience and reliability (or communication, as they all do a pretty good job as, most time, it all just works). The big USPS problem is the lines can get insane - over an hour long which simply doesn't happen at UPS or Fed-Ex - and USPS is no longer the cheapest. Plus it still bugs me that USPS pays no property taxes in NYC while it takes up massive amounts of space while UPS and Fed-Ex do pay property taxes and you can tell by their much more efficient use of space.

Oh, and UPS has outstanding on-line tracking - to the point that you can follow the truck on a map bringing your package - neither Fed-Ex nor USPS is close.

 

[EngProf]

My experience with USPS has been almost entirely positive. They have yet to lose or significantly damage any outgoing shipments (hundreds at this point), and the swag I order online almost always arrives on schedule or sooner.

But that’s for “tracked” stuff. When I lived at 311 17th Ave. in Seattle I once found in my mailbox a notice from a veterinary practice in Florida, and addressed to a recipient at 311 17th in some burg in Florida, informing that Rambo was due for vaccinations. That’s been more than 20 years ago. At present I’m still awaiting a piece of correspondence of some importance that was mailed from Arkansas on Nov. 25. Both the sender and I are now resigned to that piece being lost forever. Fortunately, everything contained in that lost envelope can be replicated, but doing so is a real inconvenience for both parties.

Don't completely give up hope yet. I once had a letter that took 11 days to get from Nashville to West Virginia.

 

[GHT]

GHT my good man I fear you give USPS too much credit.

Oh dear, our version of USPS is called, The Royal Mail, they handle packages up to a given weight and dimensional size, but I don't know what those figures are. Just a few weeks ago my wife sent out three similar packages, to three young relatives in our distant family. The packages were all items for new born babies, clothes and cot blankets that she had made herself. The first arrives via Royal Mail 16 days later, the second 18 days and the third, just 15 miles away took a whopping 21 days.

Having been in logistics for most of my working life I really thought that given the length of time it took, the packages must have gone astray. But no, such is the efficiency of a nationalised company.

 

[Zombie_61]

The reason being that St. Paul is a sortation hub...

I've heard that explanation before, and I've also heard from people who formerly worked for the U.S.P.S. that it's nothing more than a story they tell when things don't go according to plan. Also, it makes no sense (not to me anyway) for a mail/parcel delivery service company in a country the size of the U.S. to send hundreds of millions of parcels thousands of miles out of their way daily just to scan them through one specific sorting hub, especially when they have a sorting hub less than eight miles from our house that can (and does) perform the same function.

I'm sure the simpler and more probable answer is that it was simply mis-routed. That happens regularly here; I only wish they had the integrity to admit it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You'd be surprised what one poorly-written zip code numeral on an envelope can do. I once had a letter sent to me routed to an APO address in Europe just because the sender made a "4" that the scanners read as a "9."

 

[Trenchfriend]

Not really ticking me off, but absolutely wondering about:

When I watch youtube-videos with streetfood tastings, the people on every age nearly always eat with their seemingly unwashed hands.
I of course did that sometimes, when I was young, too. But I gave it up in my very early twenties. I don't want to get sick just by a stupid fast underways-snack with my unwashed fingers! So, always using the serviette to wrap or eating straight out of the paper bag is my way to do. I'm not a hypochonder, but we press so many doorhandles in our life, yuck...
Always remembering this hell of disgustingness:
"Hewi"

What do you think about?

 

[Lean'n'mean]

^^^^
It's good for your immune system.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Not too long ago I shipped a package to Japan. It went from LA to San Francisco and then on to Tokyo where it got sent back to SF and then back and forth across the Pacific several times before it finally arrived in Tokyo to stay.

 

[Fanny]

Not really ticking me off, but absolutely wondering about:

When I watch youtube-videos with streetfood tastings, the people on every age nearly always eat with their seemingly unwashed hands.
I of course did that sometimes, when I was young, too. But I gave it up in my very early twenties. I don't want to get sick just by a stupid fast underways-snack with my unwashed fingers! So, always using the serviette to wrap or eating straight out of the paper bag is my way to do. I'm not a hypochonder, but we press so many doorhandles in our life, yuck...
Always remembering this hell of disgustingness:
"Hewi"

What do you think about?

This also really gets to me. Living with 70 other people in the woods, I always cringe a little when I see people skip the hand washing sink in the dinner line. Even further, I get absolutely livid when I see people reaching their grubby hands into food containers instead of using a utensil. I would rather wash more utensils on my hta shift (dishwashing/kitchen cleaning shift) than get worms because someone didn't wash their hands after using the outhouse or gardening or moving the pigs and then reached right into the shredded cheese because it's too much of a bother to go get a spoon.

My personal hell lately has been watching people dump the bacon grease from the cast irons into the compost instead of saving it. That's wonderful fat to fry your breakfast or whatever else in, but apparently some people just don't get it. (We actually had someone almost dump a hotel pan of duck fat a few months ago, which would have been a major disappointment if someone hadn't seen it at the last minute.)

 

[ChiTownScion]

Our experience - and we buy a lot of stuff on-line as it's cheaper than NYC prices and we also ship to our parents a lot of stuff - has changed dramatically over the past few years. USPS had been the cheapest (the standard boxes that you could ship via the ATM like machine were great - good prices, almost no lines), with UPS second and Fed-Ex being meaningfully more expensive. While our local USPS has nice tellers, the lines were (and are) brutal (if you couldn't do the ATM thing) and the tracking only okay. UPS was crowded but fast and Fed Ex had the shortest lines.

But in the last year or so, USPS prices have increased to the point where UPS is now cheaper and, since the lines are better, at UPS, we've all but stopped shipping out of USPS. Fed-Ex has become more competitive in pricing, but now the stores are a hassle where they have you basically doing all the work - putting in your info into a screen - but you still wait on line.

As to reliability, we've had very few problems with any of them, but USPS is terrible to get any info out of when there is a problem - UPS is pretty good with Fed-Ex being in between. That said, the USPS packages that have had problems have shown up pretty quickly, but the tracking is so bad (once something goes awry) that we've gotten updates that our package is coming two weeks after it's already been delivered.

So, right now, UPS seems to be winning on price, convenience and reliability (or communication, as they all do a pretty good job as, most time, it all just works). The big USPS problem is the lines can get insane - over an hour long which simply doesn't happen at UPS or Fed-Ex - and USPS is no longer the cheapest. Plus it still bugs me that USPS pays no property taxes in NYC while it takes up massive amounts of space while UPS and Fed-Ex do pay property taxes and you can tell by their much more efficient use of space.

Oh, and UPS has outstanding on-line tracking - to the point that you can follow the truck on a map bringing your package - neither Fed-Ex nor USPS is close.

Best package delivery experience I ever had was with DHL. Evidently the company is DHL Deutsche Post, part of the German Federal post service. Product in question was a pair of repro World War II RAF shearling lined air crew boots: they seemed the perfect casual footwear for cold Chicago winters.

Routing the package was half the fun. From London to East Midlands Airport, which was originally set up in 1943 as RAF Castle Donington . Then it was flown to Cincinnati /Northern Kentucky International Airport, which as originally a USAAF facility. From there to Chicago O'Hare: as Orchard Field, a production facility for Douglas Aircraft during the war. Got my historical boots in four days- and the irony of the delivery details wasn't lost on me.

 

[Trenchfriend]

DHL Deutsche Post, part of the German Federal post service.

Looong ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bundespost