Smalltown Mailman Stories #1
Foreword: My journey with with this job could be compared to getting back and forth with a toxic girlfriend, however I'm not going to focus on my employers or dramatically low paychecks. It's gonna be about people I met. Sometimes it's gonna be funny, sometimes weird and sometimes just plain sad. This is also my personal retrospective on human relations back then, I did not understand many subtle things back then, I'll try to emphasize that at certain stories
One of my regular monthly routes - I knock on the door. The door of Mrs Walters, an elderly simple woman with a disabled dependent child. As always I have to wait a few minutes before she comes over, look through the door viewer, pull off the carpet and open. I go in, I see that she is overwhelmed, I sit in the postman's seat (believe me or not, there are people in my area that have such things), I start counting pension money when suddenly Mrs Walters bursted out:
- Tragedy, a great tragedy has happened Sunmaker.
- What tragedy, what's the matter? I asked very frightened.
- Negro, a Negro, moved in! He lives just behind the wall. What will I do now, how can I leave home?
Yeah, the neighborhood was mostly white and rather racist like 50 years ago. Some people hasn't changed after this time.
Typically, every postman has friendly people in the area who lend their toilet from time to time. However, sometimes there's an urgent matter and I'm not in a residential zone. I happen to know a car mechanic in the area, but never actually asked him for that thing. So I go to the workshop, I ask if I can use the toilet. The owner indicates the place - the door to the basement. Ok, the climate is a bit weird but it needs to be done. I got the instructions on how to get to the toilet: straight through the middle and to the right. But it was soo dark out there, couldn't see anything, didn't have a flashlight. I went downstairs and immediately fell into this stockpile of metal and noisy car parts. Racket comparable to cars crashing. I hear footsteps, several workers come over, someone turns on the light (thanks for telling me there's a light here).
They see pitiful of me kicking awkwardly on the pile of car steering wheels, chairs, springs and similar stuff. After I rapidly stood up I asked while still being shocked.
- Why do you keep such stuff in a dark basement?
- There's no room in a warehouse - someone said
- Where did you get so many car chairs again?
- You see, we were going to buy some garden furniture for a bbq, but yesterday three cars crashed next to our workshop and they all came to us. Wanna come over tonight?
- Nnnno... I can't, I'm... I'm busy, thank you
Already forgot about my main business, just looked around at this freak scene, then left the scene in a hurry. After that taking a pee in the bushes in a postman's uniform was still less embarrassing than staying there a second longer. Went back to the workshop only five months later...
Factory headquarters. Front desk officer. Just two of us
- Hi Joe, I have a letter from ...
- ...From the IRS, Joe interrupted
- How did you know? Do you read minds?
- It's just because you always say that with such a trembling voice, he laughed.
Names are fictional, duh!
(src: BBC, Postman Pat)