Dear Wally 70 Post Office Ira

Dear Wally,I really enjoy your column. I am currently a postal employee and have been for many years.

Why do so many people buy 1 or 2 stamps at a time instead of buying 10 or 20? I realize that money is tight these days, but it amazes me that people will make a special trip to the post office for one simple purchase and then complain about the price of a stamp. Do I need to point out that driving to the post office uses gas, wear and tear on your vehicle and time? It’s more costly to make one special trip than to stock up. Like so many things, this makes no sense to me.

The other thing that boggles my mind is how rude people can be. They come in telling us how sick they are and in the next breath cough and spread their germs all over. YUK!! Dealing with the public can be interesting, rewarding, challenging and frustrating. Wally, do you think I’m losing my zip or just being anal?
Also, do you have an Ask Wally fan club? If so, I would like to join.

IMP, A fan and admirer from Kerhonkson, NY

Dear IMP:

First, let’s establish props--You are the collateral damage in the domestic war on germs and for that you have my deep condolences and sympathy. I often wonder how it is you postal employees are not laid low with disease each of the 365 days a year. You have nowhere to hide from the hacking public behind that faux-mica counter, do you?

(I also wonder if you were blindfolded, could you match the body odor or foot shuffle or throat clear to the customer? Do you postal guys have secret names for us like ‘Captain B.O.’, ‘Buzzard Breath’, ‘Nice Hair Piece’ and ‘Don’t You Have a Job?’)

Anyway, for those intent on rudely sharing their communicable airborne diseases with innocent government employees who have been further victimized by being forced to wear robin’s egg blue uniforms, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. IMP, you are an easy target. If you chose to wear a HEPA-95 respirator to work, or just not show up to work at all, I wouldn’t blame you one little bit.

Because you can’t conduct business behind a sheet of booger-proof glass, which would be a job requirement for me by the way, and because it’s every (post)man for himself, I think the solution is to make yourself repulsive.

How about going to a novelty shop and getting one of those giant, stick-on moles with a 3 inch curly black hair coming out of it. Slap it on your nose or something. Or get some imitation drool that you can smear on the side of your mouth. Some fake blood on your hand will do wonders in keeping people (both sick and healthy) nice and far away.

Remember, you personally just need to make yourself look less attractive than your hottie co-workers and let gravitational human nature take care of the rest. (This principle is used with roach management in NYC all the time- make your apartment less inviting than your neighbor’s and the problem necessarily goes down the hall).

You complain about the frequency and inefficiency of visits by the public-- i.e. driving the gas guzzling cars to the post office for just a stamp or two when they could easily buy a book and not have to mug through their purses every day for 44 dirty pennies. The postal office muthaship must be hip to this because they began peddling the Forever stamps- which, like grenades of SPAM, have no shelf life. Obviously our collective fear of commitment has been tickled and the once great idea of postage-purchase efficiency has worked like a potato in the tailpipe.

I think there may be more going on here. It may be that the public can’t get enough of your predictably sunny dispositions. I know from experience that I have never been treated rudely at a post office (except the 53 times when I was in NYC). Quite the opposite, it’s usually a pleasant enough conversation about the weather, which is a perennially safe and mostly enjoyable topic. A typical exchange might go:
Me: “Nice weather we’re having today.”
Postguy: “Oh yes!”
Me: “They say rain tomorrow.”
Postguy: “Yes they do.”

Now why wouldn’t I keep coming back for that? How tenderly rare and special is it to go somewhere public and not be given the finger? So thank you IMP and the rest of your colleagues.

Consider that in these days of economic uncertainty and political/ social divisiveness, we all know that your countertop acts as an ideologically inert watering hole of pleasantness as well as being a safe house for at least one non-combative commercial transaction during the day, if I may mix a few metaphors to make some roundabout point.

Get a bottle of Clorox, a bandana and stand your ground. It’ll all work out! Remember your motto: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor communicable disease, nor hammered 401k, nor loitering, nor unbathed, lingering customers shall keep you from delivering the mail. In fact, the only thing that might keep you from delivering the mail is that little 1960’s Iron Curtain crapbox on wheels they make you guys deliver the mail in because it is broken down on the side of the road and they stopped making parts when the Berlin Wall was constructed.

-Wally

Got a question for our advice columnist or just want to join his fan club? (Believe me, there’s still A LOT of room). There is a non-refundable initiation fee of $1,000 (please get a postal money order from the guy with the hairy nose mole!