George the Postmaster

When I worked for the Atlanta Post Office many years ago I got to see many characters "be themselves".    One of them was the postmaster, let's call him George.

George had many legends about him but this takes the cake:

Maybe two or three times a year George would show up at the Atlanta Federal Annex, where at that time most the mail was distributed, at an odd hour, in the middle of the night.  He would be wearing his golf outfit and carrying a golf club treating it as wand, pointing out things he wanted changed.

Yes, George had a drinking problem.

When he showed up at odd hours quickly several high ranking management would materialize and became his entourage. 

Not only did George point out things to be immediately changed but also pointing out people he thought were slackers to be fired on the spot. 

His assistants knew what to do:  When George "fired" someone a manager would go tell that person to go sit in the break room until they come and get them to go back to work.

It worked out fine, everybody was happy over the arrangement.

Or, at least until one day, when something went wrong.

George "fired" a new employee.  She overheard him and before one of the assistants came over and told her go to the break room she rushed up to George and defended herself.

They had words.  George staggered off.

Apparently, George asked what was the name of the young lady that gave him a hard time.

She was summoned to George's office, which was in another building on Forsyth Streeet.

By that time in was after 8:00am, his secretary was in the front office.   The new employee told the secretary that she had just been paged by the postmaster and she told him to go right in, he was there.

She went in.

He was not there, or that was her first reaction.  Then she heard a sound behind the desk, downward.  She leaned over the desk and there was the Postmaster with vomit all over him agonizing over himself.

He tried to rise to tell her how dare her to challenged him and fell back down, this time out cold.

She went back out into the outer office and told his secretary that he was very sick lying in the floor, she should call the nurse up or something. 

And the postmaster, as far as I know, never bothered her again.   She was still there after he left a couple years later.