@Scarred4Lyfe 10 February 2023

I really REALLY hate the United States Postal Service. Years ago, each town used to do their own sorting of outbound mail and send it to the proper place. These days, the USPS has 'hubs' that service large areas, and all outgoing mail from small towns living within the area the 'hub' services must first be delivered from the surrounding towns to the hub, where it will then be sorted and sent to its destination. While it sounds like it might be an idea to save money, we are now faced with this situation: I live over 100 miles/170 km from the 'hub' that services my area. If I am going to send a letter to someone that lives in the same town as me, first that letters travels 170 km to the hub to be sorted for delivery, and then it travels 170 km back here to be delivered, instead of the 3-4 km it actually needed to go. Or, you get this: I ordered a vinyl record from someone 90 km north of me. Instead of it simply traveling 90 km south to reach me, first it goes north 80 km to the sorting hub. Then (and I am not sure why this happened) it goes to another sorting hub 290 km south-west from the first one - which now leaves my record 193 km west of me, which is over twice the distance it actually needed to travel to get to me from the person I bought it from. Total travel distance in the mailing process (if it does indeed finally come to me from the St Louis hub) is almost 550 km. Or 460 kilometers further than if it had simply come directly to me. No wonder people don't like to send things by snail mail these days. Oh - by the way - what used to take one day has now been 5 days watching it moving through the mail system. And this is a common occurrence. Look at the map - the black arrow shows how it would have traveled under the older system, the red arrows/line show where it is traveling now. Utterly stupid.