I have little confidence in the ability of bureaucracies to do the sensible thing in a reasonable amount of time. For example, maybe for political reasons the inefficient route cannot be changed until the person who designed it retires. However, now that the story has gotten some press, the route may be officially changed ASAP. So much of bureaucratic life is about optimally allocating embarrassment.

1 – Safety. If something were to happen to a postman during his route, it may be important to know what mail had been delivered and what hadn’t, as well as where he was and the next destination. All this information is tied up in the route.

2 – Scheduling. Some people may know when their mail arrives and plan activities around it. Changing the route may require customers to adjust schedules.

3 – Accuracy/Completeness. If the postmen are allowed to design their own routes, it would be quite possible for errors to occur and addresses to be omitted. Route changes need to be reviewed to ensure that all mail is delivered correctly.

4 – Efficiency. I know this seems oxymoronic in this case, but if we have a bunch a vigilante postmen re-routing themselves on their whimsy, it would be highly likely for one of them to design a less efficient route. In fact, it could be in their interest to do so since they could perform less work and possibly retain their pay.

My hunch is that there is a procedure for changing routes that was not followed here. I imagine that had the postman filed the proper paperwork, the route adjustments could have been made and reviewed for accuracy, completeness, safety, efficiency, etc and all would be well.

Inertia, fiefdoms and various other interests often resist change for the better, often to the frustration of analytical types.

Do your work smarter then sleep on the job for a longer period of time. That is the key to union work.

The part I question here is the good of the system because it could mean anything.

And yet, they would always ask me if I wanted delivery confirmation or insurance, and if the package “contained anything liquid, perishable, flammable or potentially hazardous”. The answers to each question for each package was no. Before I exited the book business, I was probably asked the same questions 3000-4000 times, by the same set of 5 clerks at the post office. I asked a few of them why they always asked me the same questions when they knew the answers. They’re required to, and they can get in trouble if they don’t. That was the whole answer. Sad.

http://seanjtaylor.com/post/39573264781/the-statistics-software-signal

The postman’s story reminds me of the angry reaction I got from some blog readers when I revealed that I spend 15 minutes to review articles submitted to journals.

—Michael B.

As I’d alluded in the article, even if the report as I saw it were not correct, it’s entirely believable that something like this could happen. It does happen.

The interesting part in the original article that was dropped in the recycled articles is that some mail did indeed turn up in a trash container, but it could not be verified if that was him or not. So the real issue was that the post office had lost track of some mail, and the unusual fast postman who did not follow procedure was naturally suspected.

Maybe this mailman delivered his assigned mail and simply went home, as if his job were to deliver mail rather than to put in the prescribed number of hours. That really angers some people. They’d rather the work take longer.

could not find anything on this from the usual news-sites here in germany but I think this could be true.

Sadly using your head is NOT a good thing if it concerns laws and regulations here. It’s almost Orwelian: obey the rules no matter how stupid they are.
And as this is said to have happened in Bavaria (where there is a very conservative mindset common) it’s even more true