Reader C. visited the post office recently, and what he saw upset him. The good news was that his post office was doing brisk business. It was early in the morning still, but it received a lot of packages. The bad news was that these packages were piled on the floor in the lobby.

“[A]pparently the back area was so jammed with already-mailed packages that there wasn’t any more room to send them through to the other side,” he complained to Consumerist. Photos? Of course he took photos.

Isn’t that good news? Hurray, people supporting the postal service! Hurray, a busy local government entity! Yes, but there’s a problem with this workflow, too. “Any joker could simply walk in and walk out with several armloads of packages,” notes C. “and no one would ever know what happened! Hell, I could have done it if I’d wanted to.”

C. told the people behind the counter about his package-related concerns. He also contacted his local postmaster, but didn’t hear anything back. We passed his photos and story on to representatives of the U.S. Postal Service, but we didn’t hear anything back either. It could be that this is just how they’re dealing with an era when they have to cut back on staffing levels, but computer-addicted customers keep buying and selling stuff online and printing their own postage at home. Or maybe C. caught them on an off day.

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