The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1913. POSTAL INCONVENIENCES.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 21 December 1915, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1913. POSTAL INCONVENIENCES.

(With which is incorporated The Tai hape Post and Waimarino News.)

On many occasions we have been asked why box-holders at the local post office should be sj)eeially subjected to inconvenience and annoyance with respect to parcels delivery, and now a correspondent has addressed a letter to us on the same subject. If a multiplicity of complaints count for anything it shows that they are well-founded. As a matter of fact this journal has not been free from the inconveniences our correspondent waxes so eloquent about. It appears that a man who gets his letters over the counter after each mail, can at the same time receive delivery of any parcel that may be addressed to him, but the box-holder, after the principal mail of the day arrives, goes to his box directly the mail is sorted, about 8 p.m. and finds a card, which he is advised by an inscription thereon must be taken to the counter before the parcel is forthcoming. Our correspondent comes in, or sends in, a few miles each evening for his letters, anc? frequently finds one of these “ blessed*' parcel notices. He takes his letters, but if he wants his parcel ever so badly he has to wait till next day, and then he has to waste half-a-day in making a special journey into town to present the annoying ticket at the post office counter. He is all the more mad because he sees a neighbour, who lives a little nearer town, who has no pos* office box, get his parcels the sam? evening they arrive, and without loss of time in making a second journey into town. His strictures on the Taihape Post Office from a public convenience point of view arc of an ptreme character. Ho .iver«s that it J s altogether anomalous to Call it a public convenience, and he raises his voice, most strongly, against the public ? s money being expended in maintaining a nubile, inconvenience and annoyance. We sympathise with our correspondent for after some thirty odd years of faintv continuous business connection with New Zealand post offices wf- havo never ?onnl one less inconvenient *n a general way than the one at Taibrre. The parcel trouble

complained of here has not come und notice similarly in any other place, and we cannot understand why an intelligent management allows such an irritating condition to continue. There seems to be no reason why the man who pays for a box, so that -he may get his letters on Sundays, or at anytime when the Office is closed, should be penalised by being compelled to make a second journey for his parcels. If the annoyance js not removable by local powers of management ;t should certainly have the attention of higher authorities. We have hitherto, had no occasion but to speak in the highest praise of our postal and telegraph system, and we have refrained from drawing - attention to the various aspects «.f inefficiency locally because we hoped matters would improve, but instead of improvement things are retrogressing until they are invoking the resentment of several of the Department’s best clients. Matters which are now being submitted to the Department will later on be discussed in these columns if a change for the better is not made, but there is one irritating little circumstance that surely might be very well attended to locally without giving anyone more work, but would convenience many without inconveniencing any, and that is the keeping open of the box lobby sufficiently long after S p.m. on Sunday evening so that churchgoers, golf-players or anybody else could get their mails ready for business on Monday morning. A newspaper has to be published and it would not require a great stretch of intelligence to realise what a, helo it would be to 8 newspaper man to be able to get communications that may need early publication. True these might be got- during the day, but the journalist i? one who is so much a part of his office on days of publication that he likes to get away one day of the seven, and we do not believe the Postal Department wishes to continue a practice that tends to . rob him of this day. i here is always someone in riie Post Office, and therefore it would be no hardship on any employee if the lobby doors were locked, say at nine r’clock in place of eight on Sunday niglris. We should appreciate such a concession, and we are aware that many others would, as the local Chamber of Commerce has the subject under consideration W,e do not like to state anything harshly, but there ought to 1- a realisation of the fact that the Post Office came into existence for the puo lie benefit and not for the special advantage of its officers.