OLYMPIA, WA (SatireWire.com) — The United States Postal Service’s decision to cease Saturday mail delivery was disappointing news to veteran letter carriers across the country who say they will now never get the opportunity to go postal on a weekend.
“One of the great things about the postal service is the benefits: the healthcare, the overtime, the opportunity to lose your shit, in a horrific way, six days a week,” said Trevor Lee Updike, who has worked in the Olympia, Wash., post office for 22 years.
Updike, a quietly moody military veteran known to colleagues and customers alike for his unnerving stare, hatred of Asians, and collection of scale model World War II internment camps, insisted he had no specific plan to go postal on a Saturday, but said carriers’ right to do so should not be singled out for elimination. Under the USPS restructuring plan, post offices will be open as usual, but letter delivery will be halted.
“If you look at the history of postal worker meltdowns, most do it on a weekday; lots of Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays,” he explained. “Saturdays are still busy, but you just don’t have the pressure of next-day delivery. On a Saturday, I’d have more time to relax and think about not thinking about the unthinkable things I’m doing.”
In nearby Sequoia Park, 58-year-old mail carrier Chris Kalgoulas, agreed. The volatile former EMS technician, known to clerks and local police alike for his facial tics, distrust of authority, and atavistic obsession with 16th Century medical procedures, said the change in service was disruptive enough to disrupt the disruption he claimed a right to one day cause.
“I worry that this is just the beginning, that they’ll cut back on more days and, eventually, take the ‘postal’ out of ‘Postal Service,'” said Kalgoulas. “I’m really upset, but I don’t know what to do about it because if I was going to really show how upset I am, I’d do it on a Saturday.”
In the meantime, both Kalgoulas and Updike promised they would continue to deliver letters five days a week to customers with the same efficiency, care, and overwhelming sense that something’s not quite right.
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