What is Digg?117 Comments
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+67Nothing in google cache, or coral.
Wayback has it.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060207085924/http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html - Rhine23, on 10/12/2007, -2/+59Sorry Heres the text had it saved on my machine
Postal Experiments
by Jeff Van Bueren San Francisco, California
Having long been genuine admirers of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which gives amazingly reliable service especially compared with many other countries, our team of investigators decided to test the delivery limits of this immense system. We knew that an item, say, a saucepan, normally would be in a package because of USPS concerns of entanglement in their automated machinery. But what if the item were not wrapped? How patient are postal employees? How honest? How sentimental? In short, how eccentric a behavior on the part of the sender would still result in successful mail delivery?
Testing the Limits
We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting. We discovered that although some items were never delivered, most of the objects of even highly unusual form did get delivered, as long as the items had a definitely ample value of stamps attached. The Postal Service appears to be amazingly tolerant of the foibles of its public and seems occasionally willing to relax specific postal regulations.
Procedures
Our research staff began the project by obtaining and reviewing relevant information on USPS regulations and discussing, in a limited and very hypothetical manner, the planned project with USPS 800 number personnel. A group of mailable objects was then assembled, stamped with abundant postage by weight and size, and mailed at public postal collection boxes (when possible to cram the object through the aperture) or at postal stations (if possible). A card was strapped to the object with duct tape or stranded strapping tape, and postage was affixed to the card, except as otherwise noted below.
Senders and receivers were interchangeable; the mailings were double-masked to conceal the identity of our mailing specialists, and gloves were used to prepare the mailings (to avoid fingerprints). In no case was a return address givenÑeach object either went forward to its destination or was lost to follow-up. An object was considered lost if it was not received within the 180-day study parameter. All objects were sent first class using five-digit ZIP codes to actual domestic addresses, and the number of days to delivery were recorded (excluding postal holidays). The condition of the object upon receipt was also recorded, if it had changed, as was any unusual communication, verbal or written, from the postal carrier or counter clerk.
Materials and Findings
The items we mailed fall into several broad classifications, which are described here.
***
VALUABLE ITEMS. These were items that seemed stealable or had some apparent business worth.
Letter with stamp placed at top left corner (incorrect stamp location). Formal business-style letter, to formal business name, in high-quality envelope. Days to delivery, 21. The stamp was crossed out by hand; the top right corner of the envelope was stamped with the following: EVIDENCE POSTAGE WAS AFFIXED, ONE RATE OKÕD.
$1 bill. Sealed in clear plastic, with label attached with address and postage. Days to delivery, 6.
$20 bill. Days to delivery, 4.
Football. Days to delivery, 6. Male postal carrier was talkative and asked recipient about the scores of various current games. Carrier noted that mail must be wrapped.
Pair of new, expensive tennis shoes. Strapped together with duct tape. Days to delivery, 7. When shoes were picked up at station, laces were tied tightly together with difficult-to-remove knot. Clerk noted that mail must be wrapped.
SENTIMENTAL ITEMS
Rose. Postage and address were attached to a card that was tied to the stem. Delivery at doorstep, 3 days, beat up but the rose bud was still attached.
Wooden postcard. Dimension 4" x 6" x 3/8", showing a moose and mailed from Maine. Postage used was 20 cents in spite of the added weight, because investigators strongly expected successful delivery in this case. Days to delivery, 6.
Molar tooth. Mailed in clear plastic box. Made a nice rattling sound. Repackaged in padded mailer by unknown individual; the postage and address had been transferred to the outside of the new packaging. A handwritten note in a womanÕs writing inside read, "Please be advised that human remains may not be transported through the mail, but we assumed this to be of sentimental value, and made an exception in your case." Days to delivery, 14.
Sound-emitting toy. A monkey-in-box toy that, upon shaking, shouted, "Let me out of here! Help! Let me out of here!" Addressed in big letters to LITTLE JOHNNIE. Sound toy was equipped with a new battery. Delivery at doorstep, 6 days.
UNWIELDY ITEMS. These were items that would be a challenge to handle.
Hammer. Card was strapped to hammer handle; extra-large amount of postage was attached. Never received.
Feather duster. The card with postage and address was attached by wire to the handle. Days to notice of delivery, 6. Clerk at station commented that mail must be wrapped.
Ski. A large amount of postage was affixed to a card that was attached to the ski. The ski was slipped into a bin of postage that was being loaded into a truck behind a station (a collaborating staff member created a verbal disturbance up the street to momentarily distract postal workersÕ attention). Notice of postage due received, 11 days. Upon pickup at the station, the clerk and supervisor consulted a book of postage regulations together for 2 minutes and 40 seconds before deciding on additional postage fee to assess. Clerk asked if mailing specialist knew how this had been mailed; our recipient said she did not know. Clerk also noted that mail must be wrapped.
Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route.
Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight. The address was written on the balloon with magic marker; no postage was affixed. Our operative argued strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of our postal item. This line of reasoning merely received a laugh from the clerk. The balloon was refused; reasons given: transportation of helium, not wrapped.
POINTLESS ITEMS. These were items that looked like a prank.
Can of soup. Never received.
Coconut. Fresh green coconut containing juice, mailed in Hawaii. Delivery at doorstep, 10 days.
Brick. Mailed at street corner box with ample postage for weight. Never received.
Lemon. Never received.
Small bag of kitty litter. Never received.
Bald tire. The card with postage was strapped to the tire. Refused at station.
SUSPICIOUS ITEMS. For reasons given.
Sound-emitting toy. Same toy as under "Sentimental" above, wrapped securely in brown paper. Never received.
Street sign. Conceivably a stolen item, or illegal possession. Notice of attempted delivery received, 9 days. Handed over at station with comment that mail must be wrapped.
Box of sand. Packaged in transparent plastic box to be visible to postal employees. Sent to give an impression of potentially hiding something. The plastic box had obviously been opened before delivery and then securely taped shut again. Delivery without comment at doorstep, 7 days.
Wrapped coconut. Wrapped in brown paper. Made ample sloshing sound, and round shape seemed suspicious. Attempted mailing at station. Clerk requested identification of object. When told it was a coconut, clerk informed our mailing specialist that a certificate from the US Department of Agriculture would be required before it could cross state lines. Not mailed.
Wrapped brick. Wrapped in brown paper; posted in street corner box with same amount of postage as was strapped to unwrapped brick. Extreme weight for size made package seem suspicious. Notice of attempted delivery received, 16 days. Upon pickup at station, our mailing specialist received a plastic bag containing broken and pulverized remnants of brick. Inside was a small piece of paper with a number code on it. Our research indicates that this was some type of US Drug Enforcement Agency release slip. The clerk made our mailing specialist sign a form for receipt.
DISGUSTING ITEMS. These items were malicious, potentially infectious, smelly, etc.>
Deer tibia. Our mailing specialist received many strange looks from both postal clerks and members of the public in line when he picked it up at the station, 9 days. The clerk put on rubber gloves before handling the bone, inquired if our researcher were a "cultist," and commented that mail must be wrapped.
Large wheel of cheese. The cheese was already extremely ripe (rancid) at the time of mailing. Mailed in cardboard box. The cheese had oiled its way through the bottom of the cardboard box by the time of pickup, 8 days. The box had been placed in a plastic bag.
Dead fish, old seaweed, etc. Mailed in cardboard box. Notice to pick up at station, 7 days. The postal supervisor warned our mailing specialist that he could be fined for mail service abuse, even as a recipient, should this happen again.
***
Summary and Concluding Remarks
First, this experiment yielded a 64% delivery rate (18/28), an almost two-thirds success rate. (For our purposes, "delivery" constituted some type of independent handling by the USPS and subsequent contact regarding the object, regardless of whether we got to see or keep the object or whether it arrived whole.) This is astounding, considering the nature of some of the items sent. This compares with a 0% rate of receipt of fully wrapped packages from certain countries of the developing world, such as Peru, Turkey, and Egypt. Admittedly, those were international mailings, and thus not totally comparable; nevertheless, the disparity is striking.
Second, the delivery involved the collusion of sequences of postal workers, not simply lone operatives. The USPS appears to have some collective sense of humor, and might in fact here be displaying the rudiments of organic bureaucratic intelligence.
Finally, our investigation team felt remorse for some of its experimental efforts, most particularly the category "Disgusting," after the good faith of the USPS in its delivery efforts. We sought out as many of the USPS employees who had (involuntarily) been involved in the experiment as we could identify, and gave them each a small box of chocolate.
We, and all scientists, owe a debt of gratitude to these civil servants. Without them, we would have had but little success in pushing the envelope. - samadam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+45@ninjaboy:
You do know that the subscription version of that magazine does not include the cover or the disk. Only the newsstand version does because that one has a higher profit margin. - Pottersquash, on 10/12/2007, -1/+39
has anyone tried to digg duggmirror? would it create a massive loop and destory the internet? Could this be the key to ending life in Second life? - leobaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31A friend of mine mailed a painted begel to his daughter. Wrote the address on the bagel and added enough stamps and into the box. It got there no problem.
- juniorcosmonaut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+30so why do they suck?
- Pottersquash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19a government agency taking off government holidays? you kid?!!?!? why would it do such a thing!!!!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Duggmirror seems to be getting fewer and fewer of the stories everyday. Maybe the user base is expanding too quickly and therefor more stories submitted. I hope duggmirror gets an upgrade!
- grahamcase, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19I mailed a half eaten muffin to a friend once. just taped the address and postage to the muffin, and dropped it in the mailbox. no box, no nothing over it, except the tape that held the address and stamp...
...it made it too! - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16"Say what you will about UPS and Fed Ex but it does not take them 3 weeks to deliver DVD's and their tracking system is functional."
3 weeks to deliver a DVD implies usage of the Media Mail postage rate. Media mail postage is under $2 for a DVD. Neither UPS nor fedex will ship anything for $2. - wahooka, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16kudos to the post office. they really are awesome. one of the best services offered by the US government
- migbike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15@leobaby
I did the same thing with a painted coconut from Hawaii - carcass350, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13@Ramble
USPS has a little bit larger of an area to cover on average than Royal Mail. Maybe that is why Royal Mail is faster. - JesusHatesMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I once sent my friend at another college a plain ol' box of Captain Crunch. Just slapped the address label on the box, had it weighed at the post office, paid the postage, and off it went. It showed up at his college post office three days later but they gave him some really weird looks.
- humperdeath, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Best revenge: Tape that postage prepaid 'Business Reply' envelope that comes in with your junk mail to a brick, and mail that back to the sender. The will have to pay the postage!
- simpleid, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19New rule on digg, seriously. If it's word press, don't use it as your source, find something else.
Thanks! - NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+18*sigh* Here in Missouri i had to stop getting pc gamer delivered to my house cause it was never in the packaging and the dvd was always missing.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14As much as the USPS sucks, they're the fastest, cheapest, and most reliable mail system in the world.
- c0r3file, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Don't hate on Wordpress. Hate on the gimpy ISPs that can't handle traffic. (Hint: The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Reuters, Yahoo, and many other major content providers use Wordpress based publishing without a problem.)
http://wordpress.com/notable-users - bofhcabbit, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Hah, duggmirror shows a mirror of the crash page. We lose.
- dio33, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route."
Wow thats gross... - nastysquar3d, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Well regardless of whether the article stayed up or not I'll vouch for the reliability of USPS.
I've sent dozens of packages with them and have never had a problem, always quick, dependable, and cheap. - livejamie, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10site's down and it's not even frontpaged ytet
- ohearn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8And it is the one part of the federal government that makes a profit!!!
- PacoDG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Can't believe the guy drank the bottle of water (from the article).
- humperdeath, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8What if you sent a helium balloon in the mail, it has 'negative weight' Will you get a postage refund back from the post office? Just wondering?
- raada, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8USPS kicks ass. I love USPS. Cheap and gets there.
- baldycraig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7USPS delivers at no extra charge on Saturdays, which easily makes up for the extra holidays.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Good thing the only thing in the bottle was water.
- profile14, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I once mailed a bag of potato chips from VA to upstate NY, just slapped a label and postage to the bag. It got there in perfect condition and the postman told my friend the mail handlers took it delivery as a challenge.
- rtbenson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7duggmirror really should catch the stories when they hit the front page of the upcoming stories list (sorted by most diggs) instead of the main front page. Then it would have an accurate cache of the site before it gets inundated.
- j0hnc0ry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@rhine23
Thanks for the re-post. Also, I'm glad you included the article name and author. It seems like a lot of people who re-post articles often forget this. - mooninite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I got mail delivered on Christmas DAY from the USPS for crying out loud. It was a 17" LCD monitor! I couldn't believe it. I felt bad too because it was for myself and not a gift. >.<
Don't bad mouth the USPS around Christmas. - maddonkey, on 10/12/2007, -18/+23we just wonder what they were thinking and send it on its merry way
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The real trick of course is to mail a letter to a relative by just their name. No address. No return address.
It will make it... somewhere... eventually
Works better if your relative/friend has an uncommon name. - mc_hambone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Dude, late December is THE BUSIEST mailing period in the year. They're on a different time-line (Priority extends to 5 days) with all mail because of the enormous volume: http://www.usps.com/holiday/deadline01.html
Also, FedEx EXPLICITLY makes exceptions to the normal shipping times during Christmas - basically (unless you paid out the ass for Express service) you'd have to ship it out even before the 18th to get it before Christmas:
"When is the latest that customers can ship packages for delivery before Christmas?
FedEx Express will accept packages until Friday evening, Dec. 22, for delivery before Christmas. Customers shipping packages in the contiguous U.S. will have until Dec. 15 to ship via FedEx Ground and until Dec. 18 via FedEx Home Delivery for delivery before Christmas (Dec. 13 for packages shipped to or from Alaska and Hawaii)."
All from: http://www.fedex.com/us/holiday/shipping/faq.html - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"if you ignore the exchange rate, cheaper too."
If you ignore the fact that that doesn't make any sense, it makes sense. - hiPpymIck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Wrapped brick. Wrapped in brown paper; posted in street corner box with same amount of postage as was strapped to unwrapped brick. Extreme weight for size made package seem suspicious. Notice of attempted delivery received, 16 days. Upon pickup at station, our mailing specialist received a plastic bag containing broken and pulverized remnants of brick. Inside was a small piece of paper with a number code on it. Our research indicates that this was some type of US Drug Enforcement Agency release slip."
hps nice pun thenativeraver
hahaha - ltuspud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@merre
Thanks for the link. It works and it's hilarious. - har0ld, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I wish we have a postal service like this in France...
- gcauthon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4How do you know it's on word press before it's dead?
- david76, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Oh yeah... USPS is great...
USPS Tracking: "It left here. It hasn't arrived there." - Tracking from USPS is useless. They don't provide information on individual scan locations like UPS or FedEx.
USPS Priority Mail: "Well, it's not really our priority." - Priority Mail is not guaranteed. They just say it will probably arrive in 2-3 days, though if you read the fine print it says 3-10.
USPS Parcel Post: "You're probably not home, so we won't bother checking." - In Manhattan despite having numerous packages delivered, nobody from the post office ever rang my apartment. They would just put the pink slip in my mailbox and leave so I could pick it up myself. - Evic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My wife comes from a very small town in Alaska (Naknek) with another small town nearby (King Salmon). Most of our mail to those two towns is labelled as:
First and Last Name
General Delivery
City Alaska Zip Code
It gets delivered every time - even to people who don't have mailboxes (they are spotted at the store or wherever).
In addition to that - we sent a keychain with our pictures etched into it to my mother-in-law for Mother's Day. She got the card but somehow the keychain fell out of the package. Three weeks later the postmaster stopped by my mother in law's house to give her the keychain - they eventually found it on the floor in the back. - fatlip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3someone's a bit cranky!
- schnitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, the really impressive thing is, they'll deliver addresses like:
"The 3rd house down Elm St with the red door, Los Angeles"
"Apartment #3 above the Upper East Side Macy's"
"The White House" (no other info)
"The Governor of California"
"Administrator, McMurdo Station"
If it's a small town, they'll even deliver stuff to "Georgina, Small Town, OH" - trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In the useless items section I was really hoping they would send an addressed stamp, just the stamp, no letter or packaging of any kind
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Really? Mine take a day.
- Dpack1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4digg down, wrong reply
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My grandfather worked for the postal service for 30 years. He made one of those tennis ball dangling things for your garage [hits your window when you are far enough in] and sent it to my mom. He was apparently confident in the USPS ability to deliver so he did not wrap it and simply attached the address and postage to the string.
Got there just fine. - khiddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Iputspikesinyou and @carcass250: Wrong, though I too used to believe that same fallacy.
The USPS is a Presidentially-established entity of the government. The .COM at the end of their name reflects the fact that they're run like a business. From their website:
"The United States Postal Service® is an independent establishment of the Executive Branch of the United States Government. It operates in a businesslike way." -
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