My route carrier is a wonderful person... he's got my cell-number and calls me to make sure I'll be home to sign for anything requiring signatures. He even is willing to stop by by on his way in from his route... I like him quite a bit. (My UPS driver also calls ahead... the Fedex gal isn't so friendly) My USPS and UPS carriers both get good tips come the holiday seasons.

My local branch is a horrible place to go. I've never waited less than 45 minutes for counter service. Usual wait is 1hr. I'm sure you've all heard that when the post office had complaints about super slow service at branches that they removed the clocks from the customer area rather than improve service?... Yah, they did that at my branch. There is a circular tan mark on the baby-blue wall where the clock was removed a few years back.
They have a self-service computerized kiosk... it seems to function about 20% of the time.

As a result of the local branch... I send almost everything via UPS and EMS. I'll gladly pay the extra 2 bucks for an hour of saved time. My local UPS store has never had more than 2 people in line and the wait has never been over 5 minutes.

I don't wish my route carrier to be unemployed, but I'm all for abolishing the USPS and letting UPS/Fedex/DHL/etal pick up the pieces in private carrier services. IMHO we spend far too much on generally poor service... I'm sure some branches are wonderful, but I haven't had the pleasure yet.