At the risk of ragging on the US Postal Service a bit, I’ll keep this really short.
The postal staff placed this letter in our PO Box today. At first, I thought it was one of those meaningless surveys where they keep asking how they are doing, like a yappy little puppy. I almost threw it away unopened, but then Twitter went down and I found myself with an extra few minutes to spare. So, I opened the letter.
It appeared they added more services to our PO box. I don’t know what that could possibly mean, but they gave a web address, so I went there.
Nothing new.
Here is what I think the US Post Office should provide to registered corporations. We would even be willing to pay extra for these services.
1) A giant shredder. We could start it up with our PO box key even so that only companies that are buying PO box services could use it. It would have to be strong enough to shred catalogs. Lots of catalogs.
2) A physical mailing address for UPS and FedEx deliveries. It never fails that the only time these outfits want to deliver something that requires a signature is when everyone is out of the office and the receptionist zips out across the street for a quick cup of coffee. I want to be able to have someone send something to 116 W National Rd, Suite 6, Englewood, OH 45322 without having to worry about hitting that three-second window the UPS gives you to race back across the street with three hot lattes and a sticky bun.
3) Email/SMS Text messaging when something is placed in the PO box. You could put a sensor in the bottom of the box that automatically sends out a text when something is delivered. And of course, text message/email for UPS/FedEx as well.
With a lot of companies downsizing their office space and many asking employees to work from home, these services sound like they make sense. The infrastructure (with the exception of the giant shredder) is already in place. The USPS just needs to relax some of their policies a bit. Any legitimate corporation would be able to provide all the documentation needed to control stuff for Homeland Security concerns.
Instead of trying to get us to stuff our business into standard-sized boxes, maybe the USPS needs to be thinking a little more outside theirs.
This post originally appeared on GerardMcLean.com