WESTMINSTER — A recent cover of The New Yorker shows construction on the post office on 8th Avenue and 32nd Street in Manhattan. You can read the end of the quote carved into the marble façade along the front of the building.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” it reads. A construction guy is working, mid-word, on a continuation of the quote along the rest of the façade and around its corner: “Except for Saturdays and betwe-."
It was the perfect cartoon for me, validating my recent lack of faith in the U.S. Postal Service.
I was so glad that I wasn't the only one feeling this way. I had loved the post office and its workers for so many years - for my whole life, really, ever since I had gotten my first pen pal; ever since Christmases far from my grandparents when packages arrived double-wrapped and tied with string; ever since penny postcards.
But something has been happening during the past few years which has made me less and less fond of the agency.
It isn't just the movement toward the end of Saturday delivery - that's a big thing that gets your attention. My own disaffection with is with the little things - the minuscule manipulations that you can shrug off one at a time until all at once you crack.
* * *
I cracked one recent Saturday when I stopped by the post office to mail a page of pictures of hurricane damage from the newspaper to my grandson in Hawaii.
I had already mailed a duplicate to my daughter in California a week earlier which I had added to the pile of outgoing envelopes at work.
I had weighed that envelope and found that it needed 84 cents' worth of postage. I then dug through my stamp cache and came up with the exact amount. This week I wasn't so lucky, so I stopped at the post office to replenish my supply.
At the counter, I handed the clerk the letter and asked to see the current commemorative stamps. She weighed the envelope and said that postage for my letter would cost $1.28.
I was still looking through the stamps, deciding if I wanted the ecology ones or the roses, so it took a minute for it to dawn on me. When it did, I looked up and challenged her.
“But isn't it three ounces?” I said. “I thought that was 84 cents.”
Now, this is the postal clerk from whom I've been buying stamps for many years, someone who knows my face and has always been friendly.
But with my challenge, she suddenly lost all cordiality and became so protective of the postal rules and regulations you would have thought she'd written them herself.
Huffily, she told me, “It's extra because it's more than ¼ inch thick."
“But it fit into a regular, everyday envelope,” I said, aware already of the rule that makes unusually shaped envelopes (like greeting cards) cost extra.
“It has to be able to fit through this slot,” she explained as though to a naughty child, and picked up a large rule-encrusted piece of poster board with a slit near one side of it.
She pushed my envelope into the slot.
“See - too thick to go through.”
I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd stuck her tongue at me at that point.
“But I mailed a duplicate of that last week from work with 84 cents on it, and it didn't come back and wasn't postage due on the other end,” I told her. And then, like the child she was treating me as, I added, “And besides, we don't even have one of those rules with a slot at work."
“Where do you work?” she asked.
I told her, afraid that now not only was I myself in hot water, but I was getting everyone at my place of employment in trouble, too.
“Well, I'll make sure you get one,” she said.
I should have quit right then. I should have realized that this was not a friend of the public but a representative of a government in dire financial circumstances.
But I couldn't stop myself.
“And what about those clasps?” I asked. “Is it true you charge 20 cents extra for envelopes that have clasps? Because I know that when those get mailed from work they don't add that extra amount. Is that on the rate poster?"
“I haven't noticed any mail from your work address having that problem, but I'll certainly watch for it. You definitely have to pay that extra amount for the clasps."
“Unless you put tape over them, right?” I asked.
“No! Even if you can't see them, it's still 20 cents extra,” she said.
Boy! Now I'd done it for sure. I gave her the $1.28 and forgot about buying more stamps.
I vowed that from now on, I'd use the Brattleboro post office, whose employees also stuck to the myriad list of rules but at least did so with smiles of sympathy.
* * *
Driving home, I was still upset, not just by the postal worker herself (anyone can have a bad day) but by the U.S. Postal Service in general.
How do they expect someone mailing a letter on their own, someone just dropping it into a mailbox at the shopping center on their way to pick up a carton of milk, to know that they need 20 cents extra for a clasp or 44 cents extra because the thickness of an envelope turns it instantly from a letter into a package, or 15 cents extra if a postcard is more than 4¼ inches high?
It seems as though all that mail still goes through, so is the U.S. Postal Service targeting only people who actually do their business face to face with a postal clerk? Is that how they hope to overcome their deficit - 20 cents' worth of sneaky, hidden charges per customer?
Who comes up with these things?
I'll tell you, if it were I who was making the rules, I'd scratch them all and just raise the price of stamps.
People would notice, but it would be honest - and The New Yorker wouldn't be making a once-respected organization the butt of its jokes.