In Canada, we went through this back in the mid-to-late 80s.
Canada Post thought they were being especially sneaky in the way they were doing it, but it was so obvious, it was almost funny.
I was on the front lines during this era, the shop steward for my Local in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and we were pretty much battling for our jobs then.
What they would do is first establish a sub-Post Office in a store, usually a grocery store or a drugstore. The store owner would get some kind of a financial incentive for signing on, and would staff it outlet with his own help, usually making minimum wage. They would then transfer the "call for" items there -- usually parcels and registered mail, just to get the public used to the idea of patronizing this new place to get their mail from. Naturally, these places usually had extended hours that the Post Office didn't have which was considered to be a plus to the public.
Then the idea would be to use "dropped mail volumes" as a justification to kill jobs at the Post Office. The long range plan was to close the office altogether and use the building as merely a letter carrier depot, without any public service on the counter.
All plans aside, things didn't go so well in our town for
Canada Post.
The only guy that would sign on owned a building with two businesses that he also owned. On one side was a laundromat, and on the other side was a store where he sold fishing bait. You could go for your Registered letter and pick up a dozen leeches or minnows if you wanted, at the same time. From what I heard, it was a very unpleasant experience because of the smell of his stock, though, which was even worse on a hot summer day, because he had no air-conditioning. On top of that, people complained to us that their mail would pick up this rather distinctive smell if it was left there more than a day or two. It woudl be lots of fun when the Missus' fur coat was shipped back to her from storage in the late summer, I was told by one guy, who resolved to get the furrier to ship it back by bus when the time came.
We tried to get the guy to get out of the Post Office business, but to no avail. It was bad enough that he refused, but when he called us all names in the local media, it became war. If he didn't want to get out of the Postal business on his own, we resolved we would make him get out of the Postal business.
We suspected that the staff (primarily 16 year-olds) wasn't very well trained, so we decided to see how much training they actually did have. We sent five people in one week to buy UK money orders, and insructed them to ask for money orders in "English Dollars, and to make sure you use that funny dollar sign they use over there." The limit for a money order in UK funds was L200, and every time they cost us only $200! Talk about doubling your money!
Apparently, the guy wasn't all that happy when the Postal Auditors came in at month end and found out that he was some $3000 in the hole on his Money Order funds.
We requested again that he get out of the Post Office business, but he decided to dig in his heels even deeper.
Our next operation was to get a box, plastic line it, and deposit inside a rather huge quantity of dog droppings and fish guts. This was addressed to someone we knew was on holiday for the whole summer. Of course, the package was undeliverable, a card was left in their mail that was on hold, and it parcel was dispatched to the sub-office, where regulations stated it had to be held for two weeks.
For the most of those two weeks, we were in the throes of a summer heatwave. If the place stank before this, it was minor, but apparently when those two weeks were drawing to a close, a person couldn't stand in the place with anything less than a gas mask. Where the smell was coming from, they finally found out, and attempted to contain it by putting the offending parcel inside a rather large plastic bag, but the smell lingered. At the end of the two weeks, without anyone calling for the parcel, regulations stated that it had to be returned to sender, but for some reason, there was no return address on the item, so off it went to the Dead Letter Office in Ottawa.
That wasn't the end, though. The smell persistently lingered and eventually made it's way to the laundromat.
Within a month, the guy got out of the Post Office business.
That town still doesn't have a sub-office; the regular Post Office still sells stamps and money orders over its front counter, and is still fully staffed.
Other places weren't quite so lucky though, and here in the City, there are some eight or so Post Offices that have been turned into Letter Carrier Depots, their counters closed off from the public, who has to do their postal business at a 7-Eleven, which is staffed by people who don't really have a clue what they are doing and will try to slap a meter tape on any item you bring in to them to weigh. My way of dealing with them is to let them print out their little tapes and then tell them that I want stamps, TYVM.
It's fun to see their glowering looks in response.
Posted 06/27/2009 10:13 am
