Daily Negation: March 12 -- Organizational Culture

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Daily Negation: March 12  -- Organizational Culture


"We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
deceased.  My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead."
 -- Letter written, but never mailed, by U.S.Postmaster General J.
    Edward Day, in response to a citizen who suggested that his own 
    likeness be immortalized on a postage stamp, 1962.

"The United States Postal Service suffers from a  "dysfunctional
organizational culture" ...congressional investigators said today."
  -- New York Times, October 28, 1994.

The U.S. Post Office was established on this date in 1789.  Since then,
neither rain, nor sleet, nor empty clip has stayed these couriers from 
their appointed rounds.  Of course, the phrase "appointed rounds" takes 
on a whole >new meaning when you consider that, in the past ten years, 
thirty-four postal employees have been efficiently delivered -- by 
their fellow sorters and carriers -- to that great dead letter office 
in the sky.

As for the compelling snippet of correspondence we quote above, don't
bother looking it up in the General Accounting Office's two-year,
two-hundred-page study documenting the Post Office's "dysfunction." 
The Postmaster General knew better than to mail it.  Written in 1962, 
it was bound to be published in some book long before it was ever 
delivered. Bad news travels fast -- but not by mail.

Negation:  Guns don't kill mailmen, mailmen kill mailmen.


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