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A little "Managed Service Point" sign was affixed to our mailbox last week. What the heck is that? I asked our postman and he said it's to "improve efficiency." How does that work?
—Puzzled
Come, come, Puzzled; it's the 21st century—you can't expect to go through life without getting a few stickers, QR codes or cortical implants on or about your person. Why, just the other day a lady from the health department put a "Level 3 Biohazard" sign on my laundry hamper and surrounded my bed with crime-scene tape, but you don't see me crying the blues about it.
That said, it's no wonder your mailman was a bit terse when you asked about it—those stickers are part of a scheme to curtail whatever limited on-the-job freedom he might once have had.
It is exceedingly rare that a postal worker decides to, say, stash the mail in an ever-expanding pile in his garage while spending his work days playing Mario Kart. Still, it has happened, and the "Managed Service Point" (MSP) stickers help prevent it from happening again.
Each sticker has a bar code, which your mailman is required to scan when he visits your house. The bar code information is then relayed to your carrier's bureaucratic overlords, allowing them to keep tabs on whether (and how quickly) your mailman is completing his appointed rounds.
To be clear, 99.999 percent of postal workers would never dream of throwing your mail in a dumpster (actually, I'm sure they dream about it, but they wouldn't actually do it). A larger proportion, however, would like to walk their route as they see fit, rather than in whatever stupid configuration their pointy-headed boss thinks is most efficient.
The MSP system puts the kibosh on this sort of personal initiative, however, crushing your mailman's soul with a brutal efficiency you probably thought could only be achieved by private enterprise. USA! USA!
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WWeek 2015