Could it be inefficiency?

The USPS -- United States Postal Service, the people who deliver our mail through rain or snow or dark of night -- recorded a loss of $2.8 billion for fiscal year 2008. Its debt increased by over $4 billion by the end of the calender year to $7.2 billion. I think that may be due to inefficiencies in the agency. I offer this one example as the sole basis for my hypothesis:

On Saturday, I ordered my lovely wife a gift from a store in Denver, CO. Why? No reason. I do that all the time. I buy her gifts because she's wonderful. Do I have to have a reason to buy her a gift? Anyway, the package was shipped on Monday, from Denver, via so-called Priority Mail. The USPS describes Priority Mail in the following manner on their website:

Get it there quickly.
With two-to-three-day delivery to most locations, Priority Mail services are your choice for fast, affordable shipping.

HA! is all I have to say. My 2-3 day Priority Mail package arrived today -- five days later and two days late by my calculations. The USPS managed to turn a 450 mile Denver-to-Salina trip in to an epic 995 mile journey that routed my package from Denver to Omaha to Wichita to Salina. How efficient is that? Or maybe Salina, KS isn't "most locations."

Presumably the USPS would like to compete with UPS and FedEx for shipping dollars, especially with the rise of package traffic generated by online shopping. But UPS would have never sent my package to the Land of Corn. They would have shipped it from Denver to Salina to my door and I would have had it Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. FedEx would have flown it from Denver to Memphis to Wichita to Salina to my door -- I would have paid a lot more, but I would have had it Tuesday as well.

If the USPS wants ebayers and other online shoppers to use their services, shouldn't they do what UPS and FedEx do and deliver the package quickly and efficiently? After all we are a society that demands instant gratification. With a little more efficiency, maybe the USPS could have instantly gratified me!

D