postalnews blog

San Francisco postal workers speak about the November 28 murder-suicide. From the Labor Video Project.

Yes, ahead of Holly Golightly, Travis Bickle, and even Ralph Kramden, he’s number 12 on the list. Everyone’s favorite postal worker with the poorly developed socialization skills and intense desire to transfer to Hawaii. I have to take issue with one item in the story, though- the Memorable Quote offered is “Hello, Jerry”. Well, maybe, but as a postal worker myself, I can still hear Newman explaining that postal workers ‘go postal’…

…Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. There’s never a letup. It’s relentless. Every day it piles up more and more, but the more you get out, the more it keeps coming. And then the bar code reader breaks. And then it’s Publisher’s Clearinghouse day. 

Greatest Fictional New Yorkers #12: Newman

I enjoy Azeez Jaffer’s responses to anti-postal newspaper columns, editorials, etc., as much as anyone, but I sometimes wonder if he’s missing the Postal Service’s real PR problem. Sending off another clever letter to the editor complaining about the use of the phrase “going postal” may be satisfying, but in the long run, what difference does it really make?

Meanwhile, we seem to be either shooting ourselves in the foot when we deal with postal reform in DC, or burying our head in the sand when it comes to dealing with plant consolidations in the field. Why can KFOX in El Paso say that they’ve waited months for someone from the El Paso Post Office to talk to them? Why can Senator Harkin complain that we won’t tell him what our plans are for Sioux City? Why are we letting the mailers, unions, and politicians do all the talking?

Why are we wasting our time going postal over “going postal” when there are more important things to worry about?

Postal Police Officer may not be the most glamorous career choice you could make (speaking as a budget analyst, I know something about non-glamorous careers!). But a postal cop in Louisiana has apparently found a way to puff up his chest a bit- he’s fighting the ‘War on Terror’!

When a journalist for Germany’s Deutsche Welle network attempted to videotape people queueing up to get their mail, he was told by postal police to leave the premises. He complied, but continued taping through a fence. The cops again told him to stop taping. When the journalist objected, pointing out the lack of signs indicating the area was in any way restricted, he was told to hand over his videotape. When he refused, he was handcuffed. He wasn’t released until he finally agreed to hand over the video.

The punch line?

The reporter says that at least twice, one of the cops told him ”that in the past, I would have gotten away with [filming] but not now with the ‘war on terror’“.

U.S. Postal Service detains journalist, keeping his videotape 

It’s hard to believe an actual postal worker ever thought this was funny- but to see something like this around after last week’s events is pretty sad.

Source: Flickr

Fears that the news media would bring back the ‘going postal’ stereotype in the wake of the Goleta killings have so far not, for the most part, come true.

A Google news search for ‘going postal’ the day after the incident turned up a large number of hits, but the vast majority came from an Associated Press story that was carried on many sites, often more than once as it was updated with new developments. The AP dispatches mention, fairly deep in the story, that a series of killings in the 80’s gave rise to the phrase.

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Nothing, really. It helps, of course, to talk about tragedy, but nothing anyone can say will make sense of last night’s tragedy in California. What hit me when I saw the pictures of the shooting victims in the Link today was how ordinary they looked- how normal. They look no different than the people you or I work with every day. And then, in an instant, before most of us had ever seen their faces or known their names, they were gone forever.

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