CHRISTMAS EVE IS POSTMEN’S BUSIEST DAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18643, 24 December 1928, Page 10

CHRISTMAS EVE IS POSTMEN’S BUSIEST DAY.

PILES OF PARCELS TO BE DELIVERED.

With their bicycles loaded up with bags filled to overflowing with parcels and letters, and with numerous other bags to be picked up at depots on their rounds, the Christchurch postmen are entitled to rank as among the hardest worked members of the community. Christmas Eye is their busiest day of the year, for it is on that day that the heaviest Christmas mail has to be delivered.

As far as the mail room is concerned the worst of the rush is now over, but the postmen are not so fortunate. When they came down to work this morning they found piles and piles of letters and packages waiting to be delivered, and as they got each lot ready for their rounds, more kept coming in.

Consequently instead of being able to set out at the usual time of 8.30 the postmen were unable to make a start with their first deliveries until about a couple of hours later. It will probably be nine or ten o’clock tonight before some of them are finished. The number of postmen on duty today is sixty-seven, and each man has a boy to assist him on his rounds. All set out fully loaded up, but in addition to the mail matter which they, took with them, over 400 overflow bags were sent to various depots to be picked up during the day. The Chief Postmaster (Mr H. P. Donald) stated this morning that he had brought on every extra man he could possibly get. To-day the chief rush was in the postmen’s branch and the telegraph branch, and he had taken every man who could be spared from the' other branches. The mail to be delivered this morning was exceptionally heavy, and he expected that it would be four o’clock before some of the postmen finished their first deliveries. Then they had to set out on tjieir second deliveries, and by the time they finished for the day it would be fairly late. The telegraph branch has to bear the brunt of the final Christmas rush, and to-day there are eightv-three telegraph operators hard at work dispatching telegrams, the majority of which are greetings for Christmas. The number of operators is about thirty above normal, but even with this large increase it means hard going to cope with the rush. A considerable number of additional telegraph boys has also been put on.