BUSY SEASON AT POST OFFICE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18642, 20 December 1928, Page 9

BUSY SEASON AT POST OFFICE.

PUBLIC CAN HELP BY POSTING EARLY.

The season of goodwill brings with it a great deal of extra work for the staff of the Post Office and during the past week all branches have experienced a particularly busy time.

In posting their parcels, letters, etc., the public do not, as a general rule, give much thought to the work involved in delivering the articles to their destinations, and it is this tendency which makes the burden of the postal officials so heavy. Everything comes in a rush during the last week, and, despite the difficulties that must be overcome, the staff of the Post Office carry on cheerfully, determined that no undue delays shall occur. The result of this congestion at Christmas time is that the officials are required to work very long hours, and during the past few days it has been quite a usual thing for members of the staff to put in as much as eleven or twelve hours’ exacting work in one day. To cope with the rush extra men are taken on wherever possible, but as the work of sorting is highly skilled, this branch cannot obtain much relief. The postmen also are kept going at high pressure, and now that there are lew places on their rounds where something, at least, has not to be delivered, they are invariably very late in finishing the day’s work: To-day the wretched weather added to their worries, but they just had to make the best of things and hope that to-mor-row would not be as bad. An official stated to-day that all indications pointed to the volume of mail matter being heavier than at any previous Christmas in his experience. The number of packets containing Christmas presents was exceptionally large, and there were, of course, the usual heavy letter mails. This was bad enough, but to make the congestion worse, commercial firms, which were closing up for the Christmas period, were deluging the Post Office with almanacs and accounts, etc. If the public would only post their letters and packages early in the day, instead of piling them in during the late afternoon, it would help the staff very considerably. The usual experience was to find that the bulk of the posting was left to late in the day, and while, of course, much of this was unavoidable, a little thought on the part of the public should result in an improvement of the position. This year the mail-room staff and the postmen have had a bit of a win in not having any overseas mails to cope with during the days immediately preceding Christmas Day. Often it happens that right on Christmas Eve a heavy English mail containing a large number of packets has to be sorted and delivered, in addition to the local mails. Two exceptionally heavy overseas mails, one from England, via San Francisco, and another from Australia, and England, via Suez, arrived on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, but in both cases they were distributed on the days of arrival. As the next English and Australian mail will not arrive until January 1, the work of dealing with the local mails will not be hampered unduly. The heaviest rush will probably be experienced on Saturday and Monday next, owing to the natural tendency on the part of many people to arrange that their Christmas letters and parcels should be delivered as near to Christmas as possible.