My own personal little RANT!!! I went 'Postal' today!

[DammitJanet]

DDD...that would chap my hide!

Even in my small town they keep the PO open on April 15th so they can mark the tax returns with the date.

Now, I will be darned if I can figure out what a small town the size that I am imagining Donna lives in cant take the mail and shuffle it into the local mailboxes other than it has to be stamped with that postmark and maybe they dont have that machine anymore. As far as paying your water bill online, we cant either here and it has irked me to no end. I think that is the only bill I cant pay online either. I have pitched a fit with them for years and even asked why they cant take credit card payments over the phone for people who cant get there. They wont even though they take them in the office. Idjits. I finally found ONE blank check stuck in the old check book I had that I carried for the purposes of my checking account number and set up auto pay. (I dont keep any checkbooks thanks to Cory) They wont set up auto draft without a blank check...why I dont know.

 

[donna723]

Janet, I always pay online but out of my checking account, not with a credit card. And I set it up online, just put in my account number and the bank routing number. I don't have it coming out automatically on utility bills though because I want to check them out before I pay them. If they made a mistake, they could clean out my pitiful little checking account.

And about how small our town really is - if you didn't get stopped at one of our two red lights, you could probably literally hold your breath for as long as it would take to get from one end of it to another! We have an old fashioned town square, one grocery store, two banks, one high school for the whole county - that kind of town! It's the kind of place where everybody calls the Mayor by his first name and if you have a problem you can talk to him in the checkout aisle of the grocery store if you run in to him. We got a Dollar Store several years ago and thought we hit the big time when we actually got a Sonic! And now we even have a Subway! Woo hoo! There are only about 7,000 people in the whole COUNTY, and only our town and another even smaller town. And the smaller town has its own post office so ours doesn't serve the whole county, only part of it! Our post office is open 8:30 to 2:30 on weekdays and 8:30-11:00 on Saturdays. If you work, the only time you can go is to catch them on Saturday. If you can't make it in then, too bad!

 

[DammitJanet]

You are smaller than me! Actually...we have a smaller town named Pembroke that used to be really small. I live between Lumberton and Pembroke. Pembroke is one of those small towns that had two stoplights and a Barney Fife police force. Literally...one of their cops shot themselves in the foot chasing a suspect!

Well...Pembroke may soon be rivaling Lumberton in size. It is the home of UNC Pembroke now and that university is HUGE! It has brought in loads of students and students bring in money which brings in businesses. Pembroke now has a Super Walmart, 4 grocery stores, all the major fast food restaurants, etc. And they have their own Post Office!

 

[donna723]

" ... two stoplights and a Barney Fife police force. Literally...one of their cops shot themselves in the foot chasing a suspect!"

Janet, not that long ago we had a Sheriff named "Junior" and a judge called "PeeWee"! We also had a deputy sheriff who had been called "Beer Belly" for so long, most people didn't remember his real name! They called him that in kindergarten! It's so little here that, if they ever have a jury trial, it takes forever for them to pick a jury because everybody knows everybody else and is probably related to half of them ... or their mama went to school with his mama! ;-)

 

[muttmeister]

Our town is so small we don't even have police. If you need a law officer, they have to send the sheriff from the county seat which is about 20 miles from here. Stop lights? None here; we're lucky to have stop signs. You guys don't really know what a small town is. We have a bar, a grain elevator with an attached gas station, a trucking company office, a farm/seed store, a national hog stud service, a county road garage, and a post office. And lots of empty buildings. And lots of white trash.

 

[DDD]

I guess that "small town" is relative, lol. Our city has about 10,000. To me that is s m a l l. Of course, compared to Miami most places are small. on the other hand, we don't have a Sonic. And evidently we don't require proper postal service either! DDD

PS: Downtown we also have two "stop and go" lights as the local yokels call them. At each light you can likely find
five cops waiting for the opportunity to ticket or arrest someone.

 

[Marguerite]

Mutt, our town sounds a bit like yours. No traffic lights. No police either - it's a real sore point because we get holiday traffic as well as teens who come over on weekends to sleep under the stars and then spend the nights roaming the streets and getting up to mischief. If we need to call the cops and the cops get moving as soon as we call, it still takes them half an hour to get to us. Thankfully, the ambulance officers who live in the village also bring the ambulances home, and we've learned to call them first rather than 000 (our 911 number). We do have a petrol station (and they do have gas as well - LPG). One general store, several cafes (we're a tourist town) and recently, a hairdresser. A post office agency (not the real deal) but our mail has to come over on the boat. Local mail - I'm fairly sure it all gets sent over to the mainland on the boat, sorted over there by machine, then it comes back.

The Aussie postal service is fairly fast, considering. We use machine sorting a lot and there are fairly strict rules on how to NOT address an envelope, if you want it to get there fast. Postal workers who shove bags into the back room for a few days can lose their jobs - the rules are really strict here. I know it does happen, but it's fairly rare. Our postal workers, though, are really pushed hard. I was talking to an old friend whose husband has just been forced to retire - he took time off work to have his knee operated on, but when he went to get back to his job, he was told that his route had been increased, he was not allowed to use a bike and he had to cover a larger area in the same time. With a knee still recovering, he couldn't do all that and was forced to retire. Also at busy times, occasionally a mailman goes bonkers and does something crazy like dumping mail bags in the bush.

Our post offices are open Weekdays 9 to 5, and Saturday mornings until 12 pm. We also have red post boxes on the street. We have two of these in the village although from the cobwebs, you'd wonder if they ever get emptied. But by law, they have to be emptied when the label says they are. They also have a notice on them telling you how long it will take for your mail to get there.

Certified mail - it's been years since they brought that around on the bike to give it to you IF you're home, and get you to sign for it - it just takes too long, plus puts the certified mail at risk of loss or damage. Instead, they keep it locked away at the post office and we have to go there to sign for it. A nuisance, because often I can't get down there during school hours because I'm busy with difficult child 3 and his schoolwork. But now I've been told of the way their workload has been increased and all the efficiency crud they've had to take on board, I can understand why they have long stopped delivering the certified mail.

We have another postal serviced here that DOES get delivered - it's "Priority Paid". They guarantee next day delivery, with none of the time-wasting of having to go sign for it. But if it gets lost, you're sunk. And there's no record of receipt. However, for a lot of things, it's worth it.

I wouldn't want to be a postal worker, even with all the machines that help these days.

Mind you, my friend I was talking to, with the (now-retired) postal worker husband - when we were kids, her boyfriend at the time sent her a letter with just her first name and the name of the (very long) street, and the town name. Nothing else. And the letter got to her! I remember when she showed me the letter, complete with postmark.

Marg

 

[donna723]

DDD, we used to have a deputy who pulled over every teenage driver he saw, whether they were doing anything wrong or not! I think he figured it was "preventative" traffic stops so they'd be afraid to do anything wrong! (Forgive me if I've told this before - I think I have) He once pulled over the teenage son of a friend of mine when the kid was only doing about 30 mph and started to lecture him! The boy tried to explain to him that he had just pulled out on the road, that he wasn't speeding! The deputy gave him his meanest, most intimidating look and said, "Yeah kid, but you was fixin' to get ready to!"