USPS Discrimination Against Atheism?
A study by the makers of ATHEIST SHOES
We are ATHEIST SHOES – a cadre of shoemakers & artists in Berlin, Germany, who hand-make ridiculously comfortable, Bauhaus-inspired shoes, for people who don’t believe in god(s). We have lots of customers in the USA, but sometimes the shoes we send them take longer than they should to arrive, or even go missing. And, when some of our customers asked us not to use ATHEIST-branded packing tape on their shipments, we started to wonder if the delays were caused by the US Postal Service taking offence at our overt godlessness…
SO, we launched an experiment…
We sent 178 packages to 89 people, in 49 US states. Each person was sent 2 packages; one sealed with ATHEIST-branded packing tape, the other with neutral tape.
They all left Berlin on November 21st, 2012 and, in theory, the branded and un-branded packages should have travelled at exactly the same speed.*
ATHEIST-branded packages took on average 3 days longer to reach their destinations **
9 ATHEIST packages went missing, and just 1 non-branded
ATHEIST-branded packages were 10 times more likely to disappear***
In Michigan, the ATHEIST package arrived 37 days later
The results demonstrate a significant bias, in quality of shipping, against ATHEIST-branded packages…
Having run a series of control tests in Germany and Europe, which demonstrate no such bias, the problem appears to lie in the USA and is likely explained by the differential handling of packages by the employees of the US Postal Service. Interestingly, this seems to be a national problem – traditionally less religious and more liberal states also saw high levels of delay and disappearance. Sadly, many of our customers who took part in this experiment were not surprised by our findings, even though tampering with post is a Federal Offence.
We’re no longer using ATHEIST packing-tape on our shipments to the USA and delivery times are already improving – so, please order with confidence, our godless American friends!
*all packages left Berlin via Deutsch Post at the same time on 21.11.12 and were transported to the USA, where they were handed over to the care of USPS for final delivery.
**3.03 days. One sample [illegible] t-test was significant [illegible numbers]. Also [illegible], as data was clumped toards y-axis [illegible] but this was also significant [illegible numbers]
***9.96 times more likely to disappear. [illegible numbers]. [illegible] 2-sided t-test [illegible numbers] 4 participants did not get back to us with their [illegible] and so were not included in the analysis.
Mod note: the American Humanist Association experienced a similar issue with FedEx, where one of their packages was vandalized when someone wrote "God rules" and drew a cross on the box.