The Buckingham Herald Tribblog

Happy new year, and thanks for continuing your work with the Tribune. Customer service at the [Buckingham] Post Office seems excruciatingly slow to me, and I share your frustration why a vending machine can't be installed. There is certainly space for it (the lobby area is cavernous) and a machine must cost less than adding another employee.

Chris Donahue
Buckingham

The writer is referring to "A Couple Thoughts on Christmas" --ST

Labels: Buckingham, Buckingham Station, Post Office

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 8:09 AM 0 comments

Say what you will about the Glebe Market, but they were open on Christmas day. I know that there are people in my readership who do not like the store, disliking especially the men who stand outside. But God bless owner Sam Chon for having the store open when I needed vegetable oil! (It’s not Christmas at the Thurston house without fried bread dough, and I did not realize that I had finally run through the two jugs of oil I bought at Costco about two years ago.)

No one else was open, and I did not even try Glebe Market at first, figuring surely they would be closed. I was happily mistaken.

I wish the same could be said for customer service at the Buckingham Station Post Office. I was near the end of a line that stretched from counters to doors just before Christmas on a day when only two of the three windows at the counter were open. Station Post Master Harold Graves stepped from the back room to the front counters, asked if anyone needed only to stamp envelopes, and when no one raised a hand or stepped forward, he disappeared into the back room again.

I’ve been to other post offices during the Christmas rush when managers are out in the line of people helping them with insurance forms, or delivery notifications, or answering questions.

I can guess that the holidays is a bad time to be in the postal business. It must be exhausting, with long hours and snippy people. Still, it could have been handled better.

While I’m on it, where’s the stamp vending machine in the post office?

All this at a time when NPR tells us the postal service is losing money.

For the first time, you'll find a guest column below. The writer is a former worker at the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents which might be shuttered in the economic downturn. It's an interesting piece, if more statewide than Buckingham-centric. More news next week.

Labels: Buckingham Station, glebe market, Post Office

// posted by Steve Thurston @ 7:17 AM 0 comments

Yes, they are.

The postage vending machine remains, but the copier is gone.

“We don’t know exactly when [the renovation] will start,” she said. The drawings of the space will not be made public until they are submitted to the county for approval, she said.

The letter carriers and the trucks they drive, along with people who help distribute the mail, have moved permanently to the main post office on Washington Boulevard, opening space in the back rooms of the Buckingham Station that will be converted into lobby space. (For more on this, see the Feb. 22 post—click the link then scroll down to that date and to the Feb. 28 post which has a letter to the editor concerning this story. I’m going to fix the scrolling problem soon).

There will be a new copy machine to replace the one that Ms. Greco removed.

“I was issuing too many refunds,” she said, adding, “We’re getting all new stuff.”

Except, apparently, an “Automated Postal Center,” which would allow customers to place a package on the scales, buy the postage and mail it without speaking to another living human. The station does not have enough domestic postage traffic to support the machine. The largely Hispanic population of Buckingham buys money orders or international postage, Ms. Greco said.