There was a time when you had to take care of mostly all of your business at your local post office. Buying stamps, mailing letters, sending and receiving packages and purchasing money orders that are accepted everywhere in the United States.
There was a time when you had to take care of mostly all of your business at your local post office. Buying stamps, mailing letters, sending and receiving packages and purchasing money orders that are accepted everywhere in the United States.
Those days are long gone. Twenty years ago, the Information Era settled in and the country had little choice but to embrace alternative ways of conducting business normally taken care of at the post office.
The Internet allows people to send correspondence through electronic mail and pay their bills online instead of mailing the payments. The World Wide Web put a dent in services usually only the post office offered.
Fast-forward two decades, and half of the post office sites in the city are now under review for closure as the postal service expects a $7 billion loss this fiscal year, leaving patrons to wonder how will they be able to send and receive packages, mail letters, buy stamps in bulk or retrieve business mail sent to P.O. boxes rented at the sites.
But while the Internet and other methods offer some options, some postal patrons believe there are just some services only the post office can provide.
Former U. S. Postal Service worker Dean Roland said there will always be a need for the post office and he would hate to see any of the 48 post office locations in Chicago close. The agency is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation — 149 million homes, offices and P.O. boxes — six days a week.
“I have a P.O. box that I’ve had for over 10 years, and I still go to mail letters and buy stamps, even mail packages,” said Roland.
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