Tribulations at the Post Office Sometimes the holidays can cause stress on certain categories of workers. I can’t help but think of postal workers. When people think of them, they usually think of the mail carrier delivering small packages and letters along with such things as magazines, but there are many other workers who perform their job duties inside. One time there was a bomb scare around the holidays. A package was ticking and all the workers got very nervous. I don’t know how this would work today, but years ago in a parcel post station of the postal service a worker who was at the post which rewraps the damaged packages was told to open the ticking package to see what it was. I can’t imagine this happening today, but I can’t really say. Anyway, with a sweaty brow and trembling hands he obeyed the boss who was standing at what he thought was a safe distance away. Carefully the package was unwrapped and a robot toy was inside. The batteries had been inserted and somehow the switch got turned on. I mentioned this years ago but it is worth mentioning again. In the winter it is usually cold outside in many places. There are those people who think because of the temperature they can send frozen items through the mail. It never dawns on them the packages will be stored inside a heated building. One day there was a terrible smell coming from a package. When it was opened it turned out to contain spoiled chop meat. The smell would have knocked you over. Sometimes things happen at the post office which are not discovered for a long time. One building had an area where empty mail sacks were piled. The Christmas season had come along and this meant they needed more mail sacks. As an employee lifted a couple of dozen sacks off what he thought was a pile of sacks, there was a gurney under the sacks from the Christmas before. It was full of sacks of undelivered Christmas presents. The thought went through a few minds about how some relationships might have been ruined because of this. You just never know. When you have a huge operation there are bound to be mistakes. Take for example the time a mail sorting rack was needed so an employee went into the basement and brought up an old one. In that rack was a post card from the century before. It was approximately 70 years old and was from a boy scout writing home saying what a great time he had at camp. Guess what, it had to be delivered as did those year old presents. I don’t know if all the attempts to deliver were successful, especially with the post card. Those people might have been long gone. Many people don’t realize the U.S. Post Office accepts the shipment of some live animals under certain circumstances. Live bees can be shipped along with day-old poultry, birds, scorpions and other small, harmless, cold blooded animals. This reminds me of the time a crate was sent through the mail and was sitting in the Parcel Post station. One of the nails in a board on the side of the crate had come loose and a head started to poke out. It was the head of a snake. Unfortunately for the person in the rewrap section he was ordered to reseal the crate. The crate was going to a local laboratory. There was no indication if the snakes were poisonous or not. Carefully the employee approached the crate. Luckily, the snake hadn’t escaped and the employee was able to scare it back so it withdrew its head and he quickly nailed the board back on. One of the problems for a parcel post worker is occasionally things escape from packages and many times someone may be ordered to catch it if possible. I say possible because sometimes it just can’t be accomplished. An escaping bird is a good example. The roofs in many of the stations are high, too high to reach, and sometimes a bird will escape, fly up to a rafter and escape when a door is opened to the street. There are times when objects are mailed by just sticking postage and a label on them, they are not wrapped or in a box and many times the post office will accept them this way depending on what they are. There are times when people want to send something different as a novelty. Wooden post cards are one of those things. They are available in gift shops in many places. The ability to mail strange things gets a lot crazier. I saw where a pinata was allowed to be sent through the mail with just a label and postage attached. I would think this is really taking a chance because these packages get thrown into bins from workers standing at a moving belt and a pinata was made to be broken. Even if it didn’t break while landing in the bin, who knows how heavy the next package into that bin will be? This is really relying on how kind the postal employee is. Usually if something is in a strong box you can just label it and put stamps on it, even if the box is full of advertisements such as boxes of oranges or some such other thing. Even a box of candy can be mailed this way as long as it is sealed. The United States Post Office has come a long way. We may be astonished by what could be sent by it in times past. I bet you didn’t know this, but it used to be allowed to send children through the mail. I know this is hard to imagine. There was a limit on this however and the child had to weigh less than 11 pounds and this was allowed into the early 20th century. This was because the rules at the time said anything could be shipped if it met the weight requirements. It was possible a shipment would have more in it than when it was shipped. The parcel post stations have huge swinging doors which were always opening and closing and on very cold days mice used to sneak in to get warm. If a package was in a sack and has something to eat in it where the smell attracted a mouse, it might bore into the package and remain inside unnoticed when it was delivered. Can you imagine the surprise when the package was opened and a mouse jumped out?
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