One thing I’ve noticed lately is that, in general, people are horrible at their jobs. It seems that whenever I interact with anyone, I’m met with attitude, incompetence, or both. It didn’t used to be that way. As recently as a few years ago, people seemed to care about doing their jobs well.
Back when I was growing up, we had a mailman named “Willie”. You could set your watch by observing when Willie delivered your mail. At our house, that happened six days a week at 12:10pm. Almost exactly. Back then, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” actually meant something.
We lived in the country, so Willie had to not only deal with rain, he also had to deal with the muddy roads the rain created, and the nearly-impassable roads that came to Minnesota back in the 60’s and 70’s when the rain inevitably turned into snow.
I can remember only one time when the roads were so bad that a neighbor volunteered to drive a tractor into town to pick up everyone’s mail. Other than that single time, Willie delivered the mail.
And it wasn’t just our Willie. There were a lot of other Willies, and Franks, and Ralphs and thousands of other people doing their jobs and doing their jobs well. Back then, we trusted the United States Postal Service without reservation to deliver our mail. We had to. It was our only choice.
A Few Years Later…
Fast forward 50 years.
Like most people, I buy a lot of stuff online. Mostly those packages are delivered by FedEx, UPS or Amazon. Sometimes they’re delivered by the United States Postal Service. I’ve probably had 50 packages delivered by the USPS in the past couple of years.
When I see that FedEx, UPS or Amazon will be making the delivery, I expect it to arrive when they say it will. But, if the USPS is making the delivery, I’m pleasantly surprised if the package shows up at all.
With the advent of tracking numbers, we can now watch the ball being dropped in real time.
One package originated right here in southern California. It was shipped from the other side of Los Angeles which would put it about 80 miles away. The first three days, it didn’t go anywhere. I woke up the next morning to discover that my package was now in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 3,418 miles away. It sat there for a week. Then it went to Houston for two days and finally made its way to my house.
About a month ago, I ordered something from China. I watched as it left the factory, was picked up by the local trucking service, got to the airport, got on an airplane and made its way to the U.S.
I saw that it arrived in Los Angeles, passed through customs and was accepted by the United States Postal Service. At that point, it was 70 miles from my house. The next day, it landed safely in Edmunds, Washington (1,200 miles away) where it stayed for three days. Then it went to Sacramento for two days and finally made it to my local post office.
After a day or two of sitting there, I learned it was out for delivery. Then I was told it was delivered. But I never received it. I have a camera watching my front door so I can guarantee that it wasn’t delivered, nor was it stolen by a porch pirate. I guess technically it was delivered. Just not to me.
Then there was the time that they delivered a shipping envelope with one end entirely ripped open. The only thing in the package was a piece of paper indicating the package should contain three pruning shears. The mail carrier seemed genuinely confused when I made him take it back.
Failure Rate
I haven’t been keeping track, but I know there are more examples. But let’s say the number of deliveries I’ve had with issues is three. Out of 50. That’s still a 6% failure rate.
I’m an average guy. There’s nothing really remarkable about me. Probably the only thing that sets me apart from others is that I’m fairly lucky. Probably luckier than most. So, if I have a 6% failure rate with the USPS, imagine what everyone else has.
The United States Postal Service processes 23.8 million packages a day. A 6% failure rate means that each day, somewhere around 1.4 million packages get an all-expense-paid trip to somewhere exotic like San Juan, Houston, Seattle, or Sacramento. It’s a good thing that these days we have other choices.
In 50 years, the USPS went from being the paragon of reliability, to an organization where people are surprised when they do the job we’re paying them to do.
How did that happen? They became government workers. Now, technically, they were government employees the entire time. But as the years passed, more and more policies were put in place that completely destroyed government employees’ motivation to do a good job. So, they became government workers and started doing the minimum required to keep their jobs.
Instead of putting policies in place that rewarded outstanding performers, the government put policies in place to protect the employees that either can’t, or won’t, do their job.
Under the guise of equity, their salaries were constrained by pay bands, meaning that everyone with the same job description got paid pretty much the same amount. But as we in the private sector know, having the same job description and doing the same job are two entirely different things.
An employee going the extra mile, or otherwise doing an excellent job, makes practically the same amount of money as an employee who does basically nothing. And there’s no downside to doing a poor job as it’s nearly impossible to fire the slacker.
Job Security
Essentially, unless someone shoots up a Post Office, government workers have their jobs until they decide to leave. After a while, the excellent employees realized that there was no benefit to doing their job well. Nor was there any punishment for not doing it at all. So, their performance became less excellent.
Then there were the diversity hires. You know, those people who were hired because they checked a particular box on a form. It didn’t matter if they were qualified for the job for which they were applying. They just had to look a certain way.
Now, with the advent of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, there are even more boxes to check. That includes dudes with willies pretending to be women without. But there are the same number of jobs. Which means that the government is hiring fewer qualified people and more people that just check the right box on the application form. More often than not, that means hiring horrible employees.
With each policy the government added to protect the worst performers, the best performers were motivated even less to do a good job. So, eventually, they didn’t. The good employees then also became government workers, doing no more than what’s expected of the slackers.
Private Sector Problems
How does that apply to the private sector? That’s easy. The people who created the demoralizing rules for government employees are the same people responsible for setting the rules for everyone else.
Companies have been forced to utilize the same ridiculous hiring and compensation practices that the government does. So now, like with government employees, an excellent private-sector employee gets paid the same as the private-sector slacker standing next to him. And companies are forced to hire people who aren’t qualified for anything, just because they look a certain way.
A few years back, we reached the point where it became nearly impossible to fire someone. That means that companies are stuck with underperformers. And that means that we customers still have to deal with them.
It used to be that if you had an employee who rocked at their job, you could compensate them for their performance. But that’s no longer possible. Once you’ve reached the top of your band, you need to make it to the next band before you can make more money.
Oftentimes, that means an excellent employee is promoted to a job that he or she isn’t suited for, nor particularly good at. The result is that the excellent employee becomes an underperformer.
Even worse, to get rid of their slackers, managers are often left with no option but to promote the problem employee out of their department. And everyone can see what happened. Which means the message sent to the other employees is that there is no benefit to doing their job well. So, they don’t.
Quiet Quitting
None of this is new. Oh, people are treating it like something new and giving it a cute name like “quiet quitting”. But really, this is what we’ve been moving toward for decades. Now we’re here. “Quiet quitting” is just what happens when good employees are forced to run into so many brick walls that they finally stop giving a shit.
Government employees who weren’t qualified for anything were eventually promoted into positions of power. And they decided to force onto everyone else, the rules that got themselves promoted beyond their own level of competence.
The end result is that the government regulations have essentially turned all employees everywhere into the equivalent of government workers. Which is what “quiet quitting” really is.
And that’s why packages take a 3,500 mile detour, and the experience of dealing with most companies has become similar to dealing with the DMV.
Think about where we were 50 years ago and compare that to where we are today. Now, imagine what things will be like in another 50 years if we keep going in the same direction. I don’t know about you, but just thinking about that gives me the willies.
