I've also noticed the difference in the US post offices around me and the FedEx stores and wonder why the post offices aren't nicer customer experiences.
The worst ones were a nightmare to deal with that virtually required taking a half day off work. One time I had to line up outside in the sun (I hadn’t brought sunscreen) because they decided that the line needed to be outside the building instead of inside, despite having space for it. My only guess is that they were being measured on some metric like average wait time and someone’s genius idea to game that metric was to make people in line bake in the sun so they’d rather leave than go home.
The best DMV I’ve been to ran like a well oiled machine. They had someone posted at the door to pre-review your goal and ensure you had the right papers with you to avoid surprises at the counter. You got a numbered ticket to hold. Signs showed your position in line and estimated wait time. There were thoughtfully placed chairs. Every time I visited I waited no more than 10 minutes. Even the Google reviews for the DMV office were great.
As far as I can tell the difference had nothing to do with staffing or headcount. The bad DMVs oddly had bigger offices, they just had people who moved at a snail’s pace and didn’t care about anything other than running the clock out until they could go home.
This is what people dislike about poorly run government offices: There’s a palpable malaise in some government interactions that is clearly not present in well run offices. I don’t think privatization is the obvious fix, but I can see why after years or decades of nothing changing at famously mismanaged offices that people would be willing to try alternatives
Well, all of the people?
You are certainly looking at the consequence of something that you don't fully understand. All of the people in a place don't start acting the same way for no reason.
It’s because there are no consequences for slow or poor performance. The people who want to do a good job get fed up and leave. The people who just want paychecks and no consequences stay.
It’s not a mystery.
- Those people are not doing teamwork. People (competent or not) don't leave good jobs just because some random coworker is lazy.
- Even if they were doing teamwork, hardworking incompetent team members are the ones that make life hard for everybody else, not lazy ones.
- Those people are not reaping any concrete benefit from being lazy. Being forced to sit in a chair the entire day with nothing to do is torture; if they are picking that instead of doing their work there's a real problem somewhere.
- I really doubt the people in question actually face "no consequences" and are not threatened all the time. That almost never happens in practice.
- When faced with some problem overspread through an entire organization, your proposal is to go and punish the least powerful people. I'd recommend you to think about why you think that is what is going to fix the problem.
- People with that kind of attitude have an almost perfect track record of creating this kind of problem or making it worse. It doesn't matter if it's in government or business.
I don’t know what you’re arguing at this point. I’m not talk about people sitting in a chair doing nothing.
> - I really doubt the people in question actually face "no consequences" and are not threatened all the time. That almost never happens in practice.
Are you just rejecting the existence of this situation because you don’t believe it?
I really don’t understand what you’re trying to even imply. I have anecdotes about different offices that accomplish the same exact task, but one was run very well and the other was not the slightest bit interested in running well. If you’re just choosing not to believe that a DMV office could be run poorly then I don’t know what to say, other than this conversation is going nowhere.
Aren't you taking about public attendants at a DMV?
> If you’re just choosing not to believe that a DMV office could be run poorly
I suggest you read my post again. Or... by "run poorly" you mean "the management not constantly punishing people"?
Even when you do go in, you just get a number and wait for it to be called. It’s very well organized. This is definitely a red veering on purple state.
https://dds.georgia.gov/georgia-licenseid/existing-licenseid...
We moved to Florida three years ago and the process for getting a license was not that much different. My wife had to jump through a couple of more hoops to transfer her CDL.
It actually works pretty well. If you need a driver's test or CDL background checks, you need the DPS office (which is very hit-and-miss). For everything else - tags, license renewal, etc. - a tag agent handles it. They all charge the same fees and offer the same services, so it doesn't matter which one you go to. If the local agency is always busy, someone will open another one.
I'm not normally a fan of privatization, but this is one of the cases where it makes sense. It's one of the few things Oklahoma gets right.
I personally had better experiences getting license plates than getting drivers licenses. But they are very different transactions, and issuing license plates seems much simpler to me. And I had good experiences getting a drivers license in smaller towns; the only time I waited for hours in an NC DMV was in a large city. And I would choose that experience again over the California DMV, or the Nevada DMV, but not the New Jersey DMV (which they call the MVC).
Nobody knows. But the only things guaranteed are:
- service prices will rise because now shareholders will seek a return every year.
- AI powered elevator music phone service where you must wait 30 mins before reaching a human.
- Fees and costs for every interaction.
- Workers will be encouraged to do work fast - by providing less service to people, asking people to come over and over again
- More lobbying to reduce license and registration durations because they need people to constantly renew to collect fees and profits.
About FedEx, I don't know why you think US post offices are bad. I personally find USPS to be astonishingly high quality and decent humans. FedEx is decent quality but 10x higher prices than USPS.
Ironic that you jump from “nobody knows” to statements where you’re absolutely sure that it’s worse.
Your “guarantees” aren’t even consistent with the language of the authorization. They aren’t giving these services carte blanche to define their own laws and processes. They’re just allowing someone else to execute part of the process.
It’s hard to have these conversations when one side is arguing based on ideological abstract ideas, not the actual language of the bill.
> FedEx is decent quality but 10x higher prices than USPS.
I ship a lot of packages and use a service that quotes from USPS, UPS, and FedEx.
It’s plainly false to claim that FedEx has 10X higher prices. This is just factually incorrect. FedEx comes out as the lowest price for maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of my shipments. It’s hard to trust someone’s arguments when they’re making egregiously false claims like this.
https://www.fedex.com/en-us/online/rating.html
Cheapest price on USPS for 1 lb letter is $9.70 after taxes.
https://postcalc.usps.com/Calculator/MailServices?country=0&...
That is 7x for a standard 1 lb envelope.
The claims are not as egregious as you think. You are not the only one shipping goods around. There is a market that USPS serves and I along with many others benefit from it.
For a nuanced answer, all providers are required. USPS and FedEx both serve meaningful markets.
> USPS and FedEx both serve meaningful markets.
You from two replies ago would be shocked to hear that.
One clarification: The other 4/5 is split between UPS and USPS.
I’m fortunate to have drop boxes and shipping centers for all 3 providers near my house or on the way to the gym.
And you don’t even know how to use USPS. Flat rate shipping would be cheaper at that distance for USPS.
To really invent a scenario, ship to Hawaii. It’s subsidized by the USPS.
The argument is always that a private mail company would deliver mail to the cheapest places first (like the American Letter Mail Company did) and the US post office would get stuck with the unprofitable mail. But that could be addressed by just requiring any mail company to deliver to all addresses. Instead we have a law that just requires companies charge more than the post office.
I never claimed FedEx was always cheapest. I explained that I use a service which quotes all 3 providers because the cheapest service varies by package and by destination.
I don’t understand how anyone could even believe that FedEx remains a viable company by charging 7-10X more than competitors. The entire line of argument is illogical.
FedEx blows. They are slower than USPS for domestic, and generally claim I wasn't home, despite living in a bldg with a concierge. UPS and DHL of course out do both, but FedEx is the worst.
NC outsourced safety inspections to private sector decades ago. And nothing you have described has happened.
- the service prices are all fixed ($30 or $13.60)
- tons of places to do your inspection, wait times are almost zero
- work is done in 10 minutes
- new reduced rate ($13.60) for newer vehicles was introduced some years ago
If they do something similar for driver license offices or vehicle registration offices it will be a giant leap in quality of service. Right now in bigger cities you cannot make an appointment 6 months in advance, and walk-in does not guarantee you will get any service even after spending whole day in line.