The Federal Times has provided a disturbing example of government waste. Situations like these cause many people to distrust the federal government (except, of course, when the government is invading another country with government employee-soldiers).

The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing. It’s a practice called “standby time,” and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year.

According to Federal Times article, mail volume is way down (largely because of the Internet), and the USPS can’t keep all of its employees busy. This article states that union rules prohibit layoffs or re-assignment to locations that do need workers. Federal Times reported that postal officials admitted that 15,000 postal workers did least some “standby time” last year, many of them spending entire shifts in break rooms where they do crosswords and personal reading, and some even sleep through their shifts. The article notes that letter carriers are not among the affected employees; letter carriers are being kept busy due to reduced numbers of those positions and increasing numbers of addresses to service. Speaking of mail volume being way down, my letter carrier tells me that almost everything he delivers is advertising, magazines, bills or greeting cards. People are squawking about closing some post offices, but shouldn’t there be even a bigger cost-saving move to reduce deliveries to three per week? Couldn't I possibly wait an extra day for that magazine, for that bill or for that mailer worth 15% off on my next delivery of pizza? Think of all the fuel and money taxpayers could save if we delivered mail to residences only every other day instead of every day . . .