I work for the post office derpy derpy dum...

[ODBJBG]

not hate, just amazement with the routing of mail. It makes no sense whatsoever to take a letter on a 80 mile round trip to someone only a couple miles away. For example, birthday cards from my sister in law who lives a couple miles away are postmarked Tampa, not Winter Haven or Lakeland.

It's actually pretty logical. Cheaper to have one hub where you sort all the mail for multiple areas, than to employ dozens more workers in those areas to have individual spots for sorting mail. It's cheaper and far more efficient to do it the way they do it. So rather than being the post office wasting time, money or resources, they're actually being far more efficient.

And it's not just USPS that does this. Every major shipping company in the country that does any sort of bulk, follows a similar process.