RSS 2.0 FeedOctober 6, 2011, Weekly editorial
The post office I know
When I think of the post office, I don’t think of a building. I think of people.
People like Patty, who once stuck her hand out of the slot when my pre-schooler put in a letter for me, giving her a big surprise!
People like Jesus, who patiently explained to the person in front of me how to get proof his landlord had received his rent. More and more, the post office seems to have become the poor man’s bank. I often see people ordering three or four money orders to pay their monthly bills.
People like John, whose friendship with the people on his route was proven when they gave him a retirement party. And one stop included a hot cup of soup every cold day! More than one life has been saved because of an observant carrier who saw the mail piling up and knew the homeowner was in frail health.
Then there are the people who handle our newspapers every week, our partners in getting the news to you. They help make democracy work.
When politicians bluster about bloated bureaucracies, I wonder if the bloating isn’t coming from the blowhards themselves. The people I see at my post office are working pretty hard to help keep our economy going. The carriers’ routes keep getting longer. The number of clerks at the window keeps getting smaller. Their jobs don’t get any easier despite all the mechanization and centralization.
The postal unions point out that bookkeeping shell games put into the post office budget future pension payments to employees who haven’t even been born yet. That shouldn’t be.
Congress needs to understand that the post office is important to our economy and to our democracy. It is well worth funding. Cutting services such as Saturday mail delivery will not help. Rather, it will hurt. A lot. Imagine a week with a Monday holiday. “Snail mail” will practically crawl to a halt.
Do you remember a movie called “Miracle on 34th Street”? In that movie, the post office saves the day for a Santa Claus, when letter sorters decide to deliver all the letters addressed to Santa to a courtroom where he is being tried. The judge says if the post office recognizes him as Santa then he must be Santa. Well, now the post office itself needs a miracle.
What if we each write a few choice words to our representatives about that?
