(~7 minutes to read)
Headline: “Finland’s postal workers to mow lawns”
Prologue
In Finland, postal workers have started thinking outside the mailbox. In response to declining use of the postal system, Posti’s posties are taking part in a trial of a lawn-mowing service, which will be offered from May to August. (Sounds like their lawn-mowing season’s as short as it is here in southern Alberta.) Customers will be able to sign up for weekly 30- or 60-minute lawn-mowing sessions; the customer provides the lawn and the mower (and 65 or 130 euros a month), and Posti provides the person power.
Apparently, the idea came from the postal workers themselves (heartening to hear that people are helping their own job security prospects).
I wonder if mail carriers in other parts of the world are taking note?
Pushing the Envelope
“Now settle down lads (stink-eye from the female mail carriers) and ladesses,” shouted the meeting convenor. He waited while the seventy-odd mail carriers of both genders parked themselves on the numbingly uncomfortable foldaway chairs.
“As you know, business is bad in the postal delivery… uhm… business, and it isn’t likely to improve as long as companies are able to use email to send their unsolicited mail. People are picking their bills up online, they send e-greetings instead of birthday and Christmas cards, and even the bloody taxman’s communicating via email. There was a time when some of us needed carts to carry our mailbags—these days, most of us put our entire delivery into our coat pocket.”
Mutters of agreement rippled around the meeting hall and some of the older posties shared their memories of heavily-laden mailbags with their neighbours.
The convenor called for order.
“The thing is lads… and ladesses, we’re a threatened species. Posties are becoming extinct. Postman Pat will be as confusing to kids in twenty years’ time as talking steam engines are today. We’ve got to do something to reverse the trend, and I don’t mean ban children’s TV programs.”
“We strike!” yelled a particularly large and well-groomed member of the audience. Others present took up the cause, and soon the room shook with the chanting.
The convenor held up his hands and tried to calm the meeting down. He banged his gavel; he blew his whistle; he shouted “order!” several times. Then he held up a starter’s pistol and fired it—thankfully (if a little ironically) that stopped the chanting in its tracks.
“Thank you,” said the convenor, the words making up their shortfall in sincerity with an extra helping of relief. He paused for effect and breath.
“Striking is just what the suits want us to do. They’ll lock us out and starve us into submission. Look what happened to the (British) miners in 1984; struck for a year, but the mines ended up closing anyway. Half of ‘em are being used for wine storage now, and the only men working are them that would compromise their masculinity by allowing themselves to be associated with wine… the poofs!
“So I say to the well-groomed postie at the back—if indeed he is a postie—striking is ill-advised. No—we have to think outside the box—in fact, you could say, we have to think outside the mail box. (Groans from audience)
“I don’t know how many of you spotted the news article, but the Finnish postal service is moving into the lawn mowing business. Their posties will be available to cut grass on Tuesdays for 65 euros a month, from May to August. They’ve already diversified into home meal delivery—lawn mowing is just another home-focused service to them. That’s the kind of thinking that could keep us employed.”
An elderly postie in the front row stood up slowly and painfully to ask questions. “How do they get the dinner plates through the letterbox (mail slot)? Wouldn’t it make a mess on the doormat? And what if a dog got to it first?”
The convenor pondered for a moment. “They probably have special slots in the front doors—maybe with shelves on, like you seen on prison cell doors on the telly. Anyway, we need to be thinking of services that our postal delivery service could offer, like window cleaning or bicycle repairs.”
“What’s wrong with lawn mowing?” asked a young lad about a third of the way back.
“Nothing, except it’s not an original idea, is it.”
“Why do we have to have original ideas?”
“Because we’re not bloody sheep, that’s why! If we were, we wouldn’t need lawn mowers, would we! We could eat the bloody grass!”
A ladess near the front stood up. “What about a dog walking service?” she asked.
“Now that is an original thought!” exclaimed the convenor.
The elderly postie at the front, who was still in the process of sitting down after asking his last question, reversed his slow motion. “Not likely!” he said. “Dogs and posties don’t go together very well, do they. Dogs were put on this planet to bite posties; it’s so common, it’s become a cliché. And that’s one instance where size doesn’t matter—I’ve been terrorized by Jack Russells and welcomed with gallons of drool by Great Danes.”
“What if we offered other post-related services?” asked another postie.
“Like what?” asked the convenor.
“I don’t know… what about post hole digging?”
The ensuing laughter lightened the tone of the meeting somewhat.
“Hey—we could offer postcard design services,” called out another delegate.
“Or we could be poster men and women for charities,” offered another.
“What about post-mortem services?” called out yet another, prompting renewed laughter.
The convenor motioned for order. “The reaction of the meeting speaks volumes about some of these suggestions, but you might be thinking along the right lines—after all, what’s lawn mowing got to do with postal delivery service? Whereas something with “post” or “mail” in the name might make a better connection with the public.”
Post hole postie stood up to offer another gem. “Post Offices are empty all night, right? Could we make them available as cheap overnight accommodation? We could call it ‘The Mail Inn’ service.”
“I can’t see people jumping at the opportunity to pay to sleep in a Post Office—I mean, they’re not that comfy, are they? Some of them are actually quite sketchy.”
“Then instead of ‘The Mail Inn’, we could call it ‘The Post Hole’.”
“Have you stopped to think about the people whose work we’d be taking if we offer these new services?” asked a ladess of a certain age in the centre of the gathering. “I mean, won’t the Finnish lawn mowing service providers be up in arms? And if we offered, say, dog walking services, wouldn’t the people who already make money doing that get upset with us?”
The convenor pondered. “Did FedEx and UPS think of us when they started stealing our work? No they didn’t! In business, it’s dog eat dog, I’m afraid.
“Does anyone else have any suggestions? Sensible ones, that is? We really need to push the envelope here.”
He paused.
“Then I’d like to put my idea to the meeting. Sex never loses its popularity and it never becomes obsolete—technology will never replace it, despite the widespread availability of ‘toys’.
“I’d like to propose that the lads hire themselves out as escorts, and the ladesses start taking part in—ahem—adult entertainment movies.”
“What have those ideas got to do with the postal service?” asked post hole postie.
“Well, we’ll call the gigolo service ‘Mail Bonding’.
“And the ladies’ contributions? I mean, no offence ladies, and I do acknowledge that some of us guys don’t have what it takes to be a gigolo, but some of you aren’t exactly lookers.”
Above the sound of sharp intakes of breath and knuckle-cracking, the convenor shouted, “And that’s the inspiration for the service’s name. We’ll call it ‘We Fixed It in Post’.
The room was in uproar. Men were enthusiastically contemplating their new roles and considering the moonlighting possibilities, while the women were converging on the podium, intent on telling the convenor just what they thought of his suggestions.
In the front row, the old postie wheezed a laugh out to himself. “Heh—another Pandora’s box! The ladesses will be demanding severance with pay; there’ll be a waiting list to become a postman, and there won’t be a single postie whose marriage will last more than six weeks into the job.”
Satisfied with his assessment of the situation, he rose from his seat slowly and creakily, massaged a little life into the cheeks of his posterior, unpinned his postman’s identity badge from his lapel, and laid it on the chair he’d just vacated. He ambled to the exit door at a speed that could hardly be called post-haste, and left the meeting to descend into its own version of a nascent Sodom and Gomorrah. Outside in the fresh air, he smiled, and walked into the sunset happily anticipating his life post-postman.