My Favorite USPS Postal Clerks: Gone!

Has anyone heard any official news of the USPS retiring postal clerks on a large scale in the press announcements?

Last week at two Illinois post offices I frequent, the senior clerks advised me they were retiring effective end of the week. This was last Thursday January 31.

Today there are new clerks.

Good because the USPS is trying to get its fiscal house out of the Earth's mantle.

Bad because these are the clerks who appreciate philatelists and their replacements 1) don't know why a stamp is preferred over a meter and 2) why the stamp has to be cancelled with a device and not a sharpie marker or crayon.

If anyone has noted this or has information please post.

Idea!

Make up a "cover" for each of the new clerks, to be given to them without a lot of fuss, with nice stamps, a desirable cancel, notes written directly on the covers about the undesirability of spray cancels, why covers can't be bent, folded, or scuffed, why the collector on the other end will love the cover, etc., etc., etc. Be sure to use 4 or 5 old stamps, like 2x13c, 2x10c, well away from the edge of the envelope, where they frequently get damaged in the machine.

A visual guideline, so to speak, with every factor either illustrated on the cover or annotated in small inconspicuous letters, their "guide" to keep and learn from. Cost to you, less than $1 each.

Design a sample and post it on SCF, and we're bound to think of small improvements and features, then everyone can make them as needed. Address the cover to Obama, no one will forget that. Be sure the stamps are cancelled with "cancels" you have drawn on the cover, so it doesn't mistakenly get sent and then when you're not looking, they will appoint you Postmaster General, then you'll have to quit your day job.

Here's one (of many) newspaper reports on the very subject, potentially involving 25-26,000 postal employees nationwide who have taken an incentive for early retirement:

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/se....URH8nh1hSQm