Post Office Rant With A Smile.

OK, so after being couped up for a couple of days because of the weather I shot over to the post office to get out some mailings. As I walked into our post office I see the philatelic center being dismantled and rows of cards, bottle cap openers, games, and such being put in its place.

Mind you now our philatelic center was built 10 years ago and has never once been open. So coming soon to a post office near you. The new stamp slash 7 eleven store. I think they might have been scoping out some of Canada's stamp centers for new ideas to make money.

Well finally get to the counter and I had three packs of priority mail to go out. I know could have been lots cheaper to pack them myself but wanted to give a few folks some high denomination stamps sometimes.
So then it starts, excuse me I would like to get a priority stamp on these. Blankly the clerk stared back and said, No they have to have a pvi label.
Hey I said no problem just place the stamp on there and total up a 0.00 on the label. What came next was, hold on a minute, as she went to the back to ask another employee a question. Shortly she came back and said I would have to pay 5cents extra for each stamp. Hmmm first I heard of this one please go confer with higher authority. Off she went and came back and said oh no extra charge aren't you lucky today and placed the stamps and 0.00 pvi labels on them.
Then came the international one, oh, oh, here we go again. The clerk said sir we do not have a 11.45 priority stamp for Canada.
So after explaining that 2 4.90 stamps would be fine and the remainder placed on a label, I got slapped withe custom form to go to Canada. Oh well just another day at my post office.

Now here comes the smile.

For almost the past ten years down here I have never seen a mailman in uniform deliver mail. The majority down here is contracted out to private carriers.
So I leave the post office and see a older Harley rider in full leathers loading up mail cartons with letters and boxes. Now the reason that I went over to speak with this gentleman was that he was loading them into a enclosed trailer latched behind a Harley Hog.
Yes, he was a sub contractor with the post office and was setting out on his route. I wish I had my camera today.
Ya just got to smile at that one.

Your story makes me realize how fortunate I am in my little corner of the world.

I live in a very small community and the post office is right across the street from my house. The postmaster doesn't have a large inventory of stamps, but he used to work in a philatelic center and is aware of the issues that are important to us.

About two miles up the road is a larger post office (located next to the local university of about 10,000 students). I stopped in there a couple weeks ago. It wasn't excessively busy, but there were a few people in line behind me. I was mailing an APS Circuit and when the clerk saw the APS logo on the mailing label, she said, "APS, you must be a collector." I said yes and that the package was a Circuit. To my surprise, she replied, "Let's put him some nice stamps on there." And she began to rummage around behind the counter to find some high-values and commemoratives. After they were on the package, she carefully canceled them and said, "how's that look?"

All the while, there were 4 or 5 people in line behind me, but she really went the extra mile -- even though I never asked for anything special. All I could do was say, "Thank You"

KirkS

WHOA! Outstanding, and a nice story, Kirk.

Both stories were just great.




Butch

i never thought anyone could rant and smile at the same time till I read this post :)

This is what you can buy in an Austpost store.
http://catalogue.auspost.com.au/por...pageview=two

Oh! and you can get stamps too.

Steve

Great stories guys

Dianne

I use 2 postal offices (Toongabbie and the Toongabbie East post office),the Toongabbie post office is the major post office in town and it like a 7/11 were you can buy stamps,FDC,coins,mobile phones and other things that aren't related to the postal items try posting a letter and they slap an automatic PVI (I think that's what you call it in the States),
Where as the Toongabbie East post office/newsagent has one postal worker that can't do enough for you,he looks after me like a brother even though it's part of his news agency he's philatelic minded and does hand cancelling for me,he really looks after me so every time I go there I can't go wrong.
Hope I didn't hijack the thread Mac
regards harry

[resurrecting an old thread...]

My Postmaster Retired - Time to Train the New One

I've mentioned a few times that I live across the street from a small post office. It's a small rural post office -- no deliveries, just a couple hundred boxes and a counter.

But the recently-retired postmaster used to work in a philatelic center and he's tolerant of my quirks (I'm the only collector in the community). He doesn't usually order all the new issues, but I understand why he doesn't -- most people don't care, and even I don't collect new issues.

I went over today to mail a letter (to Zhang Cheng) and met James, the new postmaster. He's a nice guy, younger than many, and I introduced myself and told him I'll be coming in once every week or ten days to send correspondence to my collecting friends.

I asked for the Waves of Color stamps, but he didn't have them. I didn't push that issue.

I then asked him if I could hand stamp my letter. He looked at me little strangely and said, "you mean you want to actually cancel the stamps yourself?" I said, "Yes, if that's OK." He said, "Sure" and handed me the stamp.

He explained to me that he still needed to put a barcode label so it wouldn't be machined. He aligned it carefully so it didn't cover any of the stamps.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I think James and I will get along fine. And maybe he'll learn a little about collectors

Kirk

[its been almost 4 years; I keep resurrecting this thread]

James (mentioned above) quit the post office to go back to school. Since then, there have been several clerks at my local post office. None of the have stayed very long, but they've all been friendly and mostly tolerant of a collector.

Just went over to mail a few Christmas cards. I told the clerk I need a couple "books" of stamps. She asked if I wanted to view her inventory. I said, No. I don't care which ones, just a couple books.

She selected one book of the Old Trucks and one of Pets. She showed them to and asked if they were OK.

$18.80 and a smile later, I walked back home.

Nice warm story there Kirk.