Life is just full of lie, falsehood, pretense, and hypocrisy

SolitaryRoad.com

Website owner:  James Miller

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My wife and I are currently sheltering from Coronavirus on a mountain farm that we own. Before coming here I filled out a form at the post office requesting that our mail be forwarded to our farm. After being here for a few weeks it was obvious that I wasn’t receiving all of my mail. Some of the statements (such as bank statements and charge card statements) that I regularly receive weren’t coming. In talking with a neighbor that we had engaged to mow our lawn I learned that mail was still being delivered at our home and he was picking it up for us. I called the local post office there and talked with a supervisor. I learned that the mail first goes to a central processing facility and it is at that central facility that mail that is supposed to be forwarded gets readdressed by automated equipment. The problem was occurring at that central processing facility rather than at our local post office. It was readdressing only about half of my mail. And it wasn’t just messing up on hand-written (script) or hand-printed addresses. It was malfunctioning on machine printed addresses such as those on bank statements and utility bills. I assume this same system is being used throughout the USA. I find it shocking that a system is being used all over the country that only works right half of the time on something as important as mail. It is important that we receive mail that is sent to us. Very important! Critically important! I had assumed that 100% of my mail would be forwarded to my farm.

Life is just full of illusions. Life is so very often so very far from what is presented or what is stated. Life is just full of lie, falsehood, pretense, and hypocrisy. I personally think that it is about 90% lie and falsehood. That is why there are so many badly deceived people in this world. A fellow on conservative talk radio was talking yesterday about a very wealthy area in New York City in which people were ultra-liberal and voted about 95% Democrat. The schools that their children attended were over-crowded and it had been suggested that some of the children be sent to schools in an adjourning district (which happened to be mostly Black). The people were furious and fought it tooth and nail. Is there some contradiction here? The people talk ultra-liberal talk, vote for the ultra-liberal politicians, but when it comes to some practical matter that concerns them personally, they are far from their talk. The fashion is to be ultra-liberal, the “in thing” is to be ultra-liberal, so they are ultra-liberal. In talk they are ultra-liberal. It is like the religious hypocrite. In talk, he is very religious. He presents a religious appearance. In fact, however, he is having sex with his neighbor’s wife.

On the topic of race in America I think there is an enormous amount of hypocrisy among liberals.

July 2020

Later note. After we went home in mid-August I went to our local post office and told a clerk that I wanted to stop a mail forward. I explained to her that on April 30 I had placed an order to have my mail forwarded to a farm we own and I wanted to stop the forward. She told me she couldn’t do it. She said it was something that had to be done down at our farm. I asked to speak to the manager. A Latin fellow came out who seemed very self-assured. I explained to him what I wanted to do and he said, “No problem!”. He said he would do it. Two weeks after talking to him mail started coming to our home. We continued receiving our mail until suddenly, three weeks later, mail delivery at our home suddenly stopped. After a week of no mail I stopped at our post office and talked to this Latin manager there about it, told him I suspected it was being forwarded to our farm again. He said, “Impossible!” But he went and checked on it and I was right. It was being forwarded to our farm again! He showed me a computer printout of my forward, said the problem was due to the form being filled out wrong. In cancelling the forwarding the employee was given the option of cancelling it for only two weeks or cancelling it permanently and he had checked the box for only two weeks. He said he would change it. Well, our mail immediately started coming again and I assumed the problem had been taken care of. It wasn’t. Three weeks after that, right at a time when I was looking for a check that I had been told had been sent, we suddenly again stopped receiving mail. After several days of no mail I was sure our mail was again being sent down to our farm. I went to the post office and explained the problem to a clerk. He disappeared and came back with a lady who he said would help me. I explained the problem to the lady, gave her my name, address, etc. She went over to a computer, spent some time there, and then came back and confirmed that our mail was being forwarded to our farm. She then started filling out a form for me that she said had to be filled out to stop the forwarding. I started questioning her about the form, told her my previous experiences with the manager cancelling the mail forward, and wondering why he hadn’t asked me to fill out a form. After filling out the form she said it had to be faxed to the right address at a central facility. She confided to me that she was the only one in the office that knew how to do this. From what she told me it sounded like the manager thought he knew how to stop the forward but didn’t (certain procedures were required that he didn’t follow).

That is where I am now. I hope the problem is now fixed. I guess it will be another three or four weeks before I am sure.

So far this whole thing has been a six month mail delivery nightmare. All because I made the bad mistake of requesting that our mail be forwarded. It is all suggestive of one of the dysfunctional mail systems of Latin America where everyone knows the mail system cannot be trusted and is afraid to mail anything important. The employees of my local post office, from manager down, are all politically correct minority group type employees (Latin and Black, no White).

In all of this a number of important pieces of our mail were returned to the sender and some were lost. We are not the only people who have gone through this kind of experience. A lady told my wife that four years ago she had done a temporary forward on her mail and she had gone through the same ugly nightmare as we have. Some of her mail was forwarded, some wasn’t, some was returned to the sender, and some was lost. Today I did a Google search on “problems with USPS mail forwarding”. What came up was a huge collection of stories that sounded just like ours. People going though mail delivery nightmares and being unable to resolve them by going to their local post office.

Most people are so accustomed to a mail system that works flawlessly that they give no thought to a situation where there is no way to receive mail. When you are unable to receive mail you start panicking!

I do find it shocking that some USPS executive could have signed off on a mail forwarding system that was so full of problems as this one. That is really astounding to me. And how could they continue using a system that they must know malfunctions half of the time?

22 Oct 20