A couple of us were playing games the other night, and the subject of postal service scandals came up. The scandals from different countries were revealingly different.

Greece: Postmasters were routinely throwing away outbound mail destined for other countries, because 1) who would complain, 2) why would the postmasters care about complaints, and 3) how could the complainers prove it?

Switzerland: There were two classes of mail: A (guaranteed overnight) and B (not overnight). The problem was that the post office was so incredibly efficient that even B-class mail was always getting there overnight. The scandal: postmasters were artificially slowing up some B-class mail to make it different from A-class mail.

USA (Chicago): Mail carriers were either so lazy or so overworked or that they kept getting caught with huge piles of old undelivered mail in their attics, basements, pickup trucks. One very large cache of old mail was found under a freeway overpass, and it was easy to find because it was on fire.