Oops!

A story about a postal SUPERvisor

I went to the post office on April the 18th, the deadline day for filing Income Tax. I expected the waiting line would extend itself out of the lobby and out the building as it did when I was a Postal Clerk on the tax deadline date.

It didn’t. The line had more people than usual, but it did not go out the door by any means. I suppose e-filing gets the credit for making the people line so much smaller.

But getting back to memory of when I worked behind the counter and line extended out to the parking lot. On tax deadline days I remember one supervisor named Keith who was energetic, hyper, mind-quick, friendly, and had an immediate answer for everything. He stood up for his employees and treated them with respect and they did likewise to him.

He had a swift way of acting. He jumped in and solved the problem before you could fully explain the problem. The reason I thought of him on tax day is because I remember him out in the street with a box and cancelling stamp, collecting Internal Revenue envelopes from people in backed up traffic to get into the post office parking lot. He was probably breaking every security and labor/management rules in the book but he swiftly got rid of a would-be long line.

Keith was a part time high school football referee. A movie about high school football and the first black football coach, starring Denzel Washington, at a school that the whites pulled the strings was partially filmed at either nearby Sprayberry High School or a high school in Cartersville, I forgot which. Keith got to play himself and even had a few lines. I forgot the name of the movie.

Another time a teenage boy living next door to Keith’s family killed all the member of his own family and somehow Keith got involved and had the boy surrender – that has been many years ago and I forgot the details.

I felt Keith was going places in the Postal Service. I thought he would be a postmaster at a fairly good size post office in just a couple of years.

Then, things begin to change. A new postal clerk transferred from Roswell, Georgia. She was a good looking young lady. Keith begin to walk by where she was working and show her easy ways of doing things. Before long, they were seeing each other outside the post office.

Keith was married and so was the new clerk.

Next they went on a weekend trip together. Ever how long a credit card statement arrives is how long Keith and the girl got to keep their jobs. When the post office finance employee found all these unauthorized charges was made on the post office credit card that was assigned to Keith, well, the postmaster had words with him and out the door he went.

Shame, he had something going for him.

The last I heard he was a top notch car salesman.