Since I'm in a storytelling mood today...

[PCIntern]

Last edited Thu Nov 3, 2022, 11:27 AM - Edit history (1)

I’m going to tell a story I have never told here.

I’ve posted over the years many stories about my parents who were in their own way fairly remarkable people but I must say probably not atypical for the generation. The story concerns my father.

After he returned from the war and four years of combat, somehow surviving, he found that he couldn’t sleep so he worked two full-time jobs, the night job was for the United States Post Office at 30th St. in Philadelphia. That is a major hub and sectional center With huge mail traffic even today. I won’t go into his duties there which were interesting but suffice it to say he was what they call a clerk which is the position that handles male and prior to ZIP Codes had to know which town was matched with which sectional center for each state so that they could hand sort the mail and direct it. His assignment was Texas which has the second most number of cities towns and hamlets only to Pennsylvania which interestingly leads the field. But that is a matter for another day.

He used to tell me two remarkable things about his coworkers. The vast number was very dedicated to doing their jobs correctly and honestly. Moving the mail was considered an essential government service which was the backbone of the country. Without mail movement in the old days everything stopped dead. The civil service job was a plum and Veterans were pleased and proud to have this relatively high paying job which only required time and not after hours investment. They had full healthcare, the only thing you ever had to pay for the hospital was a dollar a day for the TV if you requested it and pension and essentially guaranteed life‘s work with ample annual leave and sick days.

This is where it begins to get interesting: he was amazed that people would throw all this away to try to take advantage of the fact that they were literally tens of thousands of stamps which had fallen off envelopes and littered the floor, these were three and four cent stamps in those days and some people would furtively try to grab a handful of them and put them in their pocket. Well even in those days they had cameras and spotters and you immediately lost your job, your health benefits, and your pension. It was like stealing cash out of the bank drawer, you just don’t do it. But every couple of weeks somebody got dismissed for doing so.

The other storyline was that when you mail a letter from here to there, the postal inspectors know exactly who touched that letter start to finish and This has always been the case. My father used to say to me that only a moron would steal cash from an envelope because they never do it just once and it does not take long for the authorities to know exactly who has done this and who has been doing it and he knew a number of people who actually went to jail, and that was federal prison, for doing so. Interestingly, he used to say that no matter how well disguised people thought they had hidden money in an envelope, he knew when he picked it up that he could feel that certain texture. The funny part is that everyone knew that they were being watched or that they could be discovered and yet people did it anyway.

So it just goes to show you that institutional idiocy is nothing new, and that no matter how many times you tell somebody about what will happen if a certain deed is performed a fair number of people will still stick to their preconceived notion that they could get away with it. I see that as part of our political problem, that matter how many times it is proven that Republicans and/or the right wing is attempting to undermine the fabric of working class democracy, the preconceived notions persist whether they be racial, ethnic, hate-based, or simply tradition of voting for the party. It is both fascinating from an academic standpoint and depressing from a sociological and political standpoints but it seems to be a given in our society and due to the fact that education is no longer a premium this will in my opinion increase in number and severity.

Oh and one more little adage from my dad, who said that the German people were much better educated, informed, and aware and they fell for this. In America it is a lot easier to persuade the masses to hate, detest, and despise

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[ggma]

2. I learned at a very young age

that if a group of people did something "shady" and got away with it, I would be the only person who got caught. I stopped trying at all. Probably a good thing for me😏.

gg

[PCIntern]

3. That is the story of my life as well...

It actually kept me from getting kicked out of school with everybody else was getting in trouble. The 60s were not a great time, I don’t care what anybody says.

[3catwoman3]

5. I often think that I must have been one of the relatively few college students...

...who did not smoke marijuana in the late 60s and early 70s. I was in nursing school, and didn't want to risk my future profession with a drug arrest. I knew I was not cool enough to not get caught. My dorm housed nursing students on the 2nd and 4th floors, and main campus students on the 3rd floor. On that 3rd floor, you could smell the marijuana every night.

[cyclonefence]

4. Thanks for a really interesting story

And your dad was right--it's amazing that people are willing to risk an excellent job over the equivalent of stealing stamps. I think some personality types can't resist a challenge to their ability to get away with something, no matter how petty and how potentially (probably) devastating to their lives.

I wonder how much the fact that those men lived their childhoods during the Depression colored their need to do this, to make sure they had "bread for today."

[BSdetect]

6. Should you second last line be "fell" for this?

Yes, very interesting personal experience.

[PCIntern]

10. Thank you for that

Autocorrect is not my friend.

[mahina]

7. This is an extraordinary OP. Im bookmarking I will remember.

Thank you Pcintern.

Peace to your folks and to you as well

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. I'm surprised that some 70 years ago they would have had cameras in the workplace.

How many people were employed to watch those cameras all day long, since video tape didn't exist yet, and I seriously doubt that they'd be developing film all the time. I'm reminded of the myth at the phone company, when I worked there in the 1960s that there were backrooms all over where people listened in on long-distance calls all day, supposedly to make sure that the operators (and this is back before you could direct-dial long distance) were doing the job right. They'd have needed nearly as many of those listeners as there were operators, and a little bit of thinking about that logically it's pretty clear that wasn't happening. The supervisors there could listen in on our calls, just to spot-check that we were doing things correctly, but they spent only a fraction of their time doing that.

And if thousands of stamps were falling off the mail, did a lot go undelivered because of a lack of stamp? And why wasn't someone specifically assigned to picking up all those stamps?

[Otto_Harper]

9. I can't speak to the way things were 70 years ago, but 55 years ago

the post office I worked in had a number of viewing windows up near the ceiling, with one-way glass. How, whether and by whom they were manned, I haven't a clue, but, it was made clear during training and after that you were subject to constant monitoring, and any infractions would be dealt with directly.

[PCIntern]

11. They swept up at the end of every shift

And people watched the cameras -this was a federal installation and no expense was spared.

[ggma]

13. I worked at Northwestern Bell

Both as directory assistance and long distance operators. In the seventies. In Nebraska. I was monitored for two hours once by a supervisor who was after me.

It was very real.

gg

[Rebl2]

12. My husband

started working at the PO in 1984. He sorted mail in the beginning at the large facility in KC. Then he was a mailman for a short time. He definitely did like that. He especially didn’t like the day people were supposed to get their social security checks in the mail. People would threaten him sometimes if it wasn’t in the mail the day they thought they should receive it. Also the dogs weren’t great. He would sometimes put a hold on a person’s mail because their dog would come after him. Luckily I think that only happened a couple times. This was in a suburb by the way. He didn’t last long doing that.
Then he bid on a job for maintenance-much more suited to his interests. First on the outside crew that went to different stations. Then he bid on a maintenance job at the large postal facility. Oddly they did not trust him. He finally found out they thought he was a spy or postal inspector. They said his hands were too clean to be a maintenance worker-weird. Well guess what, he washed his hands and cleaned his nails. I guess they didn’t-gross. Eventually they came around and realized he wasn’t an inspector. He eventually became an electronic technician. He liked that job a lot, just not the people he worked with, who for the most part were right wing and actually would speak out about hurting democratic politicians. He finally had enough and went to the supervisor and said you tell these people to be quiet about threatening politicians, especially around him. They quit doing so around him at least. I am sure the supervisor feared he might call the FBI or higher ups in the PO. Unfortunately a year or two before he retired it started up again, but he didn’t do anything about it. He just wanted to get out of there.