The Lenox Dale Post Office

Loyalty and service, along with a federal employee’s personality, make up post offices large and small. Convenience is another issue the public has come to expect.

Over the years, the attitudes of some postal employees have forced businesses large and small to seek other means to get their goods to a customer.

Then at some point there was a transition whereby the post office improved its attitude and service, thus, one could get next day delivery within a 100 miles.

Believe it or not, I get delivery from Nantucket next day. Wow!

I am a believer in the United States Postal Service. I know it has its criticism from within and also outside. Many of its employes are loyal, good people who work daily to ensure people’s business is transmitted from one to another.

One of the big criticisms is the postal authority doesn’t know how it wants to save money:

1. Close post offices on Saturdays?

2. Raise postage rates, which they did last month by a penny.

3. Consolidate the processing system, which they did but has not proven to be an improvement in delivering mail timely.

4. Marshal a plan to close many of the small midwest post offices requiring people to travel more than 50 miles to mail a letter? No way…

Now comes the Lenox Dale Post Office, which has had a succession of personnel since the former postmaster retired. The bottom line is there is no allegiance thus if the office was to close:

-This (Lenox Dale) would be a rural route with mailboxes

-Post office closure would force Daliens to go either to Lee or Lenox Post Office.

-Given the climate today, there is little or no interaction at the Lenox Dale Post Office.

One big issue: Post offices nationwide have done away with the old station cancelation stamp. No longer can one get a post office stamp with Lenox or Lenox Dale. Probably not even Pittsfield. There is probably a regional center where the mail is processed where the cancellation  zip code is applied on one’s letter/package.

The older generations remember two deliveries a day, then it was reduced to one delivery to homes per day, and the business community received two until recently.

In the old days, it wasn’t the name of the return address that caught one’s eye, but the imprint of where the letter came from weekly or monthly.

In my case, growing up in Melrose, there was the weekly letter from Freeport, Maine, then the zip code was added, 04032. It was a letter from my grandmother to my mother.

Post office services from getting money back from an ATM machine at the counter, to have access to a copy machine, to filling out forms for certified and registered mail is either limited or slowly being phased out. Special delivery is a thing of the pass.

The post office, in its wisdom, is trying to force users into numbered street addresses. Good for them and bad for those who have historic and special addresses.

Besides, the post office has failed to institute zip-plus-four, which would reduce cost and improve efficiency throughout America. Computers today can apply mail to the route in sequence. It only needs to be installed nationwide.

The goal of  the U.S. Postal Service should be developing and instituting, nationwide, better efficiency in its processing and delivery of the mail.

Meanwhile, a public hearing will be held Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 3 p.m. at the Lenox Dale Post Office to hear all ideas, from keeping the office open with reduced hours, establishing a rural route, closing the office, establishing a new substation and/or moving the boxes into the Lenox Post Office.

Posted by George C. Jordan III on February 6, 2013. Filed under Opinion,View from the Tower. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry