us postal service | Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Today I was in the queue at the post office. The good old reliable mail system has lost some luster lately because of the prevalence of email, so staffing is lighter than usual. In this particular case there was one employee on duty, and the line for customer service for this real human being was ten people long.

Four people had packages to send, two of which were pre-paid returns which needed no additional work on the clerk’s part, but he did suggest that they obtain a receipt just in case. They stayed on to do that.

This clerk managed to juggle one woman with a complex mailing issue (involving standing aside at the counter twice), two of the package senders and a lady who swore she had been in line for a half hour (he said it wasn’t quite that long, and I think it was more like ten). She noted that she didn’t want to be a bitch about the situation, but she had places to go and things to do. Perhaps she supposed that the other nine of us in line didn’t have anyplace to go. However, the gentleman behind the counter was cool under pressure, polite beyond reproach, and whittled down that line as if it were an everyday picnic. He mentioned to one customer who noted how calm he was that he had survived a childhood in Camden, college and a family with kids, so he obviously felt prepared for anything. It brought smiles to our faces.

I didn’t catch the fellow’s name tag completely (it was glare or his ultra-white shirt or something), but he was a breath of fresh air in customer service. I don’t know many post offices with staff that pleasant in the waning business hours of a Saturday.

I was there for stamps, and I don’t like to have mine dispensed from a grocery store cash register or an ATM, so I don’t mind the minor inconvenience when I have time to spare waiting in line. When my turn came I asked politely what small stamps were available, and I noted that he probably gets asked such questions fifty times a day? “Fifty?” he asked good-naturedly. I’m sure it’s more like two hundred.

So the post office does have nice people, and I felt it was beneficial to note that. Customers waiting in line, however, are often still as sour as ever.

The post offices are in trouble because people aren’t writing letters as much as they used to. I’m guilty of that crime just by posting this online. The senior management as the postal service is talking about discontinuing Saturday mail delivery and cutting jobs to stave off default on their financial obligations.

Sure, the computer age is partially to blame, because email is easy to type, quick to deliver and doesn’t require paper, a writing implement or a 44 cent stamp. On the other hand, these virtues are in themselves sins that are negatively affecting our proper use of the English language.

I do have issues with the electronic age that I don’t have with so-called “snail mail.” For example, typing gives you many more opportunities to make mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar. I pity those who rely heavily on “spell check” or other online grammar devices. I groan and right-click my way through many a warning that my computer offers, accusing me of writing “run-on” sentences. I plow through those squiggly lines at about 65 words per minute (without my first cup of tea).

With handwriting, one must sit and take time to craft characters and periods and commas, so one must also stop to think about sentence structure. I don’t think many people hand scribe “LOL” on a piece of stationery.

I can’t say that any script font in all Microsoft Land can beat good penmanship, with a real pen and blue or black ink. In fact, after suffering the ignorance of elementary school teachers who bowed out of the responsibility of teaching good penmanship, I took the time to hone my script myself and I’ll be darned if I’ll let that skill go just because I use a keyboard every work day. I still write in journals, hand write greeting cards and envelopes and enjoy using those little sticky notes to jot down notes to myself. Even the little one-inch variety can be fun to use.

We could ask some of our elders about the good old days when mail delivery was twice daily during the holidays, or when one could take a discount on stamps if they inserted the flap on the envelope without sealing it (don’t ask me why that made a difference, but it did).

Letters have always been the tangible evidence of life lived. Years ago I had the privilege of seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s notes in New York, up close. He wrote copiously, sometimes in backwards mirror code, sometimes in circular print and always in Italian. I took the time to look at the ancient writing set to parchment so long ago, and marvelled at how fresh it looked under glass, just inches from my eyes. The ages between us didn’t seem to matter. When will that be said of an email? In fact, which of these electronic blips in a machine’s memory will outlive us?

There is something about sitting down and writing a letter that slows down time, relieves stress and grounds us in the world that is really simple but for our own machinations that surge us forward with time-saving on the mind. The pen is really mightier than Microsoft Word when it comes to reminding ourselves that some old things like the post office are still relevant and need to be preserved.

(P.S. Back on 9/11 I was the first person on a message board to post about the events in New York and Washington. The post disappeared with the message board. If it had been a piece of mail, it would still be around today.)

	Eden on Free Secretary
	Eden on Getting the Message
	Eden on The Unasked Questions
	Eden on And Her Shoes Were #9
	Eden on The Poison Field

Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Tag: us postal service

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