When a delegation meets with postal employees today, it will discuss how to improve service and deal with increased demand in Oldsmar.
By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published December 8, 2003
[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford]
Post office customers wait in line for service Thursday in Oldsmar. Many residents are upset with the service they're receiving at the facility, such as waiting in lines for more than 20 minutes. The City Council passed a resolution last week asking that the post office bring better service to their residents. and deal with increased demand in Oldsmar.
OLDSMAR - The U.S. Postal Service's guarantee goes a little differently here, residents say.
Through rain, snow, sleet or hail, the line at the post office is always long.
And December is the worst, some say, when the queue at Oldsmar's lone postal facility starts creeping out the door.
"You think this is bad?" said Kenneth Speed, 76, looking back at a row of sullen customers last week. "Come back next week. The line will be twice as long. That's why I bought extra stamps this time. I don't want to come back."
Speed waited 25 minutes to ship a few Christmas packages. As he shuffled ahead, the line bulged behind him - women carrying children in one hand, boxes in another; the men had just boxes.
Only two of the office's five windows were staffed.
"There's not enough clerks," John Sagert, 36, said leaving the building. "... It's ridiculous."
City officials are fed up waiting, too.
A delegation from the Oldsmar/Upper Tampa Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce and the City Council is meeting with post office employees today to ask for improved service. The meeting follows a City Council resolution last week that urges the postal service to meet the city's growing needs.
The city wants more employees working the post office's counters during peak business hours.
Gary Sawtelle, a Tampa-based spokesman for the postal service, said postal employees will listen to the city's concerns and try to accommodate its request. He said the number of people who pass through the line dictate the size of each office's operating budget.
The more customers, the bigger the budget, he said. In turn, that means more staff.
"But we are budgeted," Sawtelle said. "We don't have a bottomless well."
James Dougan's post office box sure seems bottomless. For the past two weeks, Dougan, 35, hasn't received any mail. All he finds at the back of P.O. Box 1595 is a piece of cardboard blocking the mail slot.
"I guess it means I owe them money," Dougan said. "Why don't they just put the $12 bill in my box, then?"
Instead, Dougan guesses that he has to go the counter to pay his dues. But on this day, like the other seven he's stopped to work things out, there are more than 15 people already waiting in line.
He doesn't have 30 minutes to wait.
"I don't have the patience," he said. "Life's too short."
Former Oldsmar City Council member Babe Wright said she was in line around 45 minutes last month to buy stamps. When she was on the council, she often spoke out on the post office's slow service.
Last month, she found a $10,000 check in her post office box that wasn't hers. When she went to return it, the employees working did not even acknowledge her presence, Wright said. She said the facility needs a major overhaul.
"If I ran my business like they did, I'd be out of a job," said Wright, who manages the Oldsmar Flea Market.
Sawtelle said one option for upset customers might be one of the area's contract postal units, which mainly operate out of local businesses. Those facilities offer the same services of a regular post office, Sawtelle said. They're simply smaller in scale.
"They run different hours, and they take pressure off of lines," Sawtelle said. "We're really getting good at them."
A new postal unit opened this month at a convenience store at 7501 W Hillsborough Ave., east of Oldsmar. It's open until 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, Sawtelle said. There's also a similar office east of U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor at 3382 Tampa Road.
Sawtelle said postal employees could work with a local business to open a closer postal unit.
"This is the new strategy," Sawtelle said. "When people find out about them, they love them. They don't want anyone else to know about them because they are so quick."
Currently, Oldsmar residents receive their mail from a series of rural postal delivery carriers who work under a different contract than city carriers. Sawtelle said the distinction doesn't affect the level of service, it merely changes the way employees are paid.
Regardless, Oldsmar officials take umbrage at any hint that the postal service sees Oldsmar as a rural area. They demand big-city efficiency.
To underscore that point, Mayor Jerry Beverland proposed amending the City Council resolution passed last week.
"Now don't laugh yet, but what if we added: "Whereas we no longer have cows, pigs and chickens running around in people's yards?"' Beverland said.
The amendment failed, but the message was clear: Oldsmar wants better mail service. And it's ready for a fight.
"I would agree that the city no longer has any livestock except for a couple of donkeys," chamber president and chief executive officer Kevin Gartland said. "And they work at the post office."
