Two items arrived in today’s mail, both sent at a postage cost of 42 cents. They were identical notices from U.S. Customs and Border Protection saying that the Web site that one might use to order a customs decal (new one not necessary until January 2009) is going to be down for maintenance from September 18 through September 24.
An ordinary company might put up a “come back later page” with the same information as in this one-page letter. The federal government, however, can afford to send every possible user of the web site a hardcopy note in the U.S. mail.
This is all too typical of government operations, I’m afraid. Your tale reminds me of the hold notices that my local county library sends me via snail mail. Despite three repeated attempts to get library staff to change my hold notifications back to email delivery, the library persists in snail-mailing them to me. In almost every case, I receive the snail-mailed notice two or more days _after_ I’ve picked up the item in question. So the library system can afford to send out completely useless snail mail hold notices and, worse, can’t figure out how not to.
I work in government and that is one of my biggest complaints. It’s the simple fact that in business you must be efficient to survive. If you can’t trim the fat your failure will be caused by the competition who will do it cheaper/faster/better (or all three). That doesn’t exist in government. So they’ll continue to print out and mail silly cards because heck, when times get tough they’ll just get a budget increase.
Of course that raises the question: Why bother sending out the cards at all? It isn’t like you’re going to go somewhere else to get your decal.