Delivered: Montana is Really Sick and Tired of USPS Issues

People want answers about what's going on at the post office. Lack of staff and poor management are both on the minds of folks who have no idea when their mail will arrive. Montana residents are not happy about their USPS mail service. And it's been this way for months.

Thankfully, the vast majority of people who commented recently in an online forum weren't blaming postal carriers themselves. Since they're the most visible USPS employee, it would be easy to simply point the finger there. But that wasn't really the case.

• My mail is delivered after 8pm at least once a week. It is happening. I appreciate my carrier for their diligence.
• I get my mail once a week if I am lucky, packages are constantly dropped at the wrong address even after repeated conversation with thee. Or the packages sit there for weeks and they won't give them to me because “they don't know if they are on a truck or not and they are not going to check.”
• I have a few friends working for the post office in different areas and they are all run like garbage! In ND their trucks barely run.

Nobody can argue that mail delivery in the greater Bozeman area has been noticeably worse over the last couple of years. Is that a real problem? That depends on what you're expecting in the mail.

• In Belgrade our current mail carrier is out ALWAYS 6 days a week and frequently 7, and I see him at 8 or 9 most days. It is NOT SUSTAINABLE as a human.
• There is no chance whatsoever she was working 7 days, nor was she working until 10pm every night (or any night for that matter). Her union rep and her postmaster would not allow this. (In response to someone stating how much their significant other was working for the USPS recently.)
• Considering my mail gets delivered at 9 pm it is easily believable that they are working until 10.
• Maybe Trump's idea of a privatized Post office is a good plan.
• My friend works there too. She has no life. People need to realize it’s not the employees being lazy.

Many commenters had direct experience working for the USPS or attempting to get a job there. Their opinions were that management of the USPS was likely to blame since their initial experience was so poor they didn't take an interview.

• I was supposed to interview there a few years ago but the manager was so rude and condescending while scheduling the interview that I canceled. It was honestly the most appalling behavior I had ever seen. Usually managers are smart enough to wait to show their true colors till you’ve worked there a few months.
• I’ve been waiting on a package from Billings for 3 weeks!!! Yet I got a package the same time mailed by UPS 2 days later.
• I dropped off a small flat rate box already had postage at the Baxter post office on a Monday morning at 730 am and it wasn’t scanned until Thursday late afternoon
• The post office is a brutal work environment, I hung in there for 4 long years but enough is enough. There is no end to what they expect of you.

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• Not all towns have USPS issues, I’ve lived a few places, Montana was the worst.
• Went there last week. They had one lady working the counter and 30 people in line. I have seen several new faces there, then they are gone. Seems like they are getting applicants and people who want to work, but management is the problem.
• I got the Pirateship app so I could print my own shipping label just so I didn’t have to deal with the post office lines.
• We get our mail around the same time every day but the USPS employee that brings it is working 16-18hr/day right now.

Of course there was a little bit of political blaming, but the vast majority of comments were frustrated locals, who by and large didn't blame the actual postal carriers at all.

Whatever the truth is about why things are running so poorly at the USPS, it needs to get straightened out soon. Postal service is important, and private sector companies are just fine...but those should not be the only delivery option.

• Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has been doing his best to corrode one of the oldest, constitutionally ensured institutions in this country.
• Again, please start researching what the destruction of the US post office means and what that result is. Post Office delivery workers are the best neighborhood watch we’ve got. Walking the streets, familiar with the homes and folks on their routes.
• The postal service has a long history of being a high pressure workplace setting. That’s all, that’s it.
• Another friend works 14-16hr a day every day. Covers a route that used to be four separate routes. Now it’s one. The pay and benefits aren’t worth it. And the post office could care less about its people!