POST OFFICE COUNTER CLERKS. Their Hard Lot.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 309, 2 June 1906, Page 6

POST OFFICE COUNTER CLERKS. Their Hard Lot.

A CORRESPONDENT draws our attention to the alleged sufferings of the clerks at the counter of the General Post Office. The average public office clerk m Wellington is hardly Chesterfieldian in his manners, and, no doubt, this may be accounted for by many reasons which our correspondent gives, and innumerable reasons that can be given by anyone with a thoughtful mind and a good imagination. • • • If a telegraph boy is not prompt in the delivery of a wire, we are assured the poor telegraph clerk is usually reprimanded by the addressee. If the wire is delayed in transmission the long-sufferer is likewise blamed, and if a wire that has been addressed to Murphystreet doesn't reach the addressee m O'Brien-street— the other end of the town — the clerk is made to suffer. • • • ' We are sorry for the clerks, but, on the other hand, why are they counter clerks? Why are they not publicans, or land agents, or editors of papers? Does the clerk wilt before the eyes of the enraged woman who threaten him with the loss of his billet because Aunt Eliza didm't write by the last mail? Or does the clerk retaliate, as he has every right to do? While sorry for the long-sufferers, "we feel that the counter clerks are able to protect themselves in most cases. • • • The average unit of the British public makes very stupid inquiriesof any public servant ,and the public servant, having passed the necessary examinations, is considered by the authorities to be a person off whom stupid inquiries may be made. If units of the public turn' up their noses, and insult the public servant, the public servant has a splendid remedy. He can become one of the public and go and do some worrying of counter clerks himself. • • .• The type of person mentioned by our correspondent, who is sure that the clerk is hiding one of her letters, is common to all peoples and all countries. She has to be endured. Nothing will ever cur© her except the last long sleep. She threatens to report the clerk for not making a search. She does the same thing to tram guards, shop girls, railway porters, and others. Be kind to her. She probably lacks the education counter clerks are themselves possessed of. • ♦ • The clerk's knowledge of routine is likely to make him impatient of the failings of people who live in another kind of groove. It is hard that, although the public expects the greatest courtesy from public servants, the public doesn't always tender courtesy in return. The public doesn't know when it enters the Post Office that the man with the fringe over his eyes is not the tele-, graph expert, or the man with the beautiful wave of shiny hair and the little curly moustache knows nothing about parcels, or the man with ' the smile and the big moustache is not the registered-letter person. It bounces up to either, and makes absurd inquiries, and it always will make absurd inquiries, and the clerks and their successors both now and evermore will be worried in the same way just as seriously as they permit such matters to worry them.