Society
Insurrection stirs in the queue
Published 15 November 2004
Observations on post offices
A few days ago, I wanted to post some irreplaceable documents by registered mail. I went early to our post office, where a queue of 15 people included pensioners gripping their books and a woman with a parcel for a soldier in Iraq. All five windows had someone behind them, but only two were "open".
In the 15 minutes I waited in line, during which I shuffled forward one yard and two places, I had ample opportunity to watch what the other three staff were doing. They were busy all right, but the main task was counting each stamp in their folders. In this vital work, two of the three were overseen by another member of staff. There was no eye contact with the waiting customers.
I had a train to catch, and had to leave. My irreplaceable documents will now go through the normal post, and no doubt be lost or delayed. Another vital package of similar size, sent first-class three days earlier from London to that remote outpost Milton Keynes, had still not arrived by the third morning.
Most of our grumbles about the Royal Mail are about deliveries (or lack of them), but poor counter service is perhaps an even greater failing. Ahead of me in that queue were a busy shopkeeper I know; several pensioners visibly wilting from their ordeal, one of them with a white stick; two young women who had slipped out of work to post passports for renewal, and who, like me, had to leave when it became clear how long it would take to get served.
Our local Post Office service - this is a busy, thriving neighbourhood of south-west London - has shrunk like an inverse Topsy. When we came here 20 years ago, there was a main post office, large and purpose-built. It was sold, though the premises remained empty for years, and the "post office" moved to the rear of a shop opposite. There, the queues wound back through a series of ropes, and customers stood for ages amid collapsed piles of out-of-date magazines and fly-blown stationery. Onwards and downwards. The queues are now in a tiny back area in what is little more than a corner shop, away from our main shopping area.
Not content with sidelining the counter service, Royal Mail also moved the main postbox. So thousands of people who simply want to post a letter have to walk a quarter of a mile in each direction, since there is no legal parking anywhere in the vicinity.
There remained one good alternative - a sub-post office at the back of another shop about half a mile away. It was close to a large housing estate, where live many of the local pensioners who collect their money in cash, and the queues were usually short. But this satellite office closed, forcing the nearby pensioners to take buses to the overcrowded "main" office.
Before I left my queue the other day, I fell into conversation with a pair of (very) elderly women pensioners. "I blame the foreigners . . . It's Blair's fault. Before he let all these immigrants in, the post office worked . . ." I did my liberal best to point out that, if anyone was still manning the essential services, it was probably "foreigners". However, they were both extremely deaf and clearly thought I was agreeing with them.
My queue was no longer as phlegmatic as it would once have been ("Oh well, they're very busy, you know"). It muttered quite loudly, and some voted with their feet. In due course, they will vote with their crosses - because, from the back of the queue, simple answers to complex questions can seem very attractive.
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