That works most of the time for most things, but there are limits. For instance when playing soccer or basketball with a box (I shit you not, I've seen it with my own eyes at a local post office while working there during a summer in the early 2000's -- we're talking about a very rich western european country, not some crappy town either. It all happened every day under the blessing of an old supervisor who didn't gaf anymore, on his way to a comfortable retirement. Oh they took whatever subbed magazine they wanted too, figuring that if it did not arrive, the person would just complain and get a new one from the publisher for free).

Seeing the condition of some packages in my mailbox, I'm pretty convinced the level of care hasn't really changed in two decades.

Many post offices around the world are formerly state-backed corporations, still heavily subsidized in many cases. They don't call you a "customer" or "client", more like a "user" or whatever your tax office calls you -- all these guys used to be in the same group of protected categories, highly-paid job-secure gvt jobs you know, with some kind of power and none of the bending to the customer that prevails in a free market; and now it's all gone to shit for most of them, paid minimum wage etc, so these are often salty or YOLO workplaces.

Not condoning any of it, not willing to talk politics, just not blaming individuals either when it's generalized; merely trying to explain why/how imho it's just a very bad idea to trust post offices in general in otherwise developed countries (top 10 GDP).

TL;DR: they play sports with your HDD packages.