I haven’t known many postmasters, but I used to chat often with the one in South Strafford, Vermont, where I got my mail. He was ruler of the domain of the post office in the general store–a box of an office and enough mailboxes for half a town of 1000 people–and he was the nicest guy, smart and funny and easygoing. Sometime during my eight years there, the postal service floated the idea of ending weekend delivery altogether, and I asked him what he thought about it. Bad idea, he said. Monday is already a crazy day, with two days’ mail accumulated; the postal service processes mail on Sunday, it just doesn’t deliver it, and you may have noticed that you get more mail on a Monday than any other day of the week. Having to handle three days’ mail on one day would be too much and efficiency would suffer. They should cancel a different day, he said. Wednesday would make more sense than Saturday.

But the post office has taken action, and not taken Vince’s advice. Saturday deliveries will cease starting August 1. I hope it won’t make Vince’s job too difficult.

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