Why we stay away from the Post Office

[POSTMAN]

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It's that time of year again, and I don't mean the time when the Christmas lights are prematurely lit. Early December is fine. No, it's that time when you have to make your annual trip to the Post Office to buy stamps for the cards you want to dispatch to far-flung parts of the globe.

First problem is to find your post office: not the simplest task when so many have shut down. And don't try telling me that you don't need a post office. If corner shops had letter-scales and stocked stamps in anything other than six or 12 first-class, that might be a solution. But generally they don't. And, maybe unreasonably, I never quite trust those Mail Box places to get the tariff right; they have so much else to do. So it has to be the Post Office.

I say that with no joy at all, as you absolutely know what awaits: a labyrinthine queue, at times protruding from the door, which slowly shuffles past the envelopes, the cards, the gift boxes, the toys, the myriad other distracting sidelines with which post offices try to disguise their central function, and finally the currency exchange counter (which, unlike the other counters, is double-staffed and otherwise deserted).

I foolishly thought I had struck lucky this week. I spotted a post office, which appeared to have more floor space than customers, and jumped off the bus, with an example of each type of card we are sending to be weighed. First appearances were promising. A queue of five people and three counters (out of seven, plus the money counter) staffed.

You can guess the rest. Twenty minutes later, I was second in the queue and just one of the seven counters was staffed. Then the girl in front of me wanted a stamp for a card to Canada, and, almost as an afterthought, asked whether she could arrange over the internet to have her post held while she was away. Yes, said the person behind the counter, but went to check anyway. There followed a mass mobilisation of staff to look for the elusive leaflet.

By the time my turn came, there were 15 people behind me, many of them with that glazed, depressed look that I thought unique to eastern Europeans under communism. I also had plenty of time to peruse a large notice with diagrams of envelopes, which said: "Be Wise! 4 out of 10 people use the wrong postal service from our range."

To which I wanted to rejoin: "You bet they do. They get so fed up waiting that they slam just any stamps on to their card, and your new system of charging not just by weight, but by size and shape, makes it impossible for the uninitiated to get it right." Actually, I'm not sure that the initiated always get it right either. An American friend received last year's card months late, although it had been sent from a post office with the recommended stamps. Just this once, I'll let the Post Office off the hook and blame US Mail instead.

[Pompey Boy]

Wish I could stay away. POs are bad for everybody - the staff, customers and us poor buggers who collect from them.