I’ve tried to but I just can’t hold this in any longer! I am clearly living in the worst postal area in Britain and the long-standing dispute that I have with my postman isn’t biasing my opinion.

I’m aware that there may be some difference in terminology between the UK and the US and so for the purpose of this discourse I am providing some definitions:

A postman (slang. postie) is someone who delivers mail/letters to households.
A pillar-box (also a post-box) is a large container sat on street corners into which you insert mail in the vain hope that it will someday reach the addressee.
A letterbox is a slot in your front door that ideally the postman should be regularly pushing your letters through.

The frontline in the battlefield between my postman and I has more recently moved to the arena of my letterbox. He is clearly disgruntled, which is readily discernible from the facial expression he gives when - after buzzing my doorbell - he hands me my mail. Mail which, I have proven, actually does fit through my letterbox - hence being devoid of the need to press the doorbell.

As I said there’s a bit of history to my discontent. Here is a letter of complaint that I wrote a year ago after a particularly inept period (I’ve taken the liberty of changing the address so as to keep the nuts that knock at my door down to the bare minimum of gas/electricity salesmen and Jehovah’s Witnesses):

From: 210B Somewhere Street, London, England

I used to wonder why I receive my mail as late as 2 p.m., and rarely before 12. Then
one morning last summer I met my postie in the local newsagent; he was in full uniform, complete
with postie-bag bulging with letters. Was he seeking advice where to put an ambiguous letter, or
buying an A to Z to help him? No, he was leaning on the counter gulping down a bottle of some
designer import lager!

Did my situation improve any after this? No!

A famous psychologist, Wolfgang Köhler, conducted experiments on chimpanzees in the 1920’s. He was able to demonstrate that they were capable of insight and could solve elaborate puzzles. One of his chimpanzee test subjects was called Sultan (judging by some of today’s sultans there’d be many who would doubtless fail were they to be similarly tested).

Sultan was placed in a cage, within his view but not within his grasp was put a piece of fruit. Sultan thought for a moment and was able to work out that if he used the short stick, which was within his reach, he could reach a longer stick, which in turn could reach an even longer stick, which he could use to grab the fruit – marvellous! Mā shā’ Allāh, isn’t it amazing how Allāh endowed these animals with intelligence like this?

Well it occurred to me that old Köhler was on to something here and so I recently emailed the customer services department of my postal service:

Dear sir or madam,

I would like to ask whether your organisation has ever considered using similar such experimental
methods during your recruitment process for postal workers? As a means to identifying these
desirable qualities amongst potential recruits?

I’ve waited and waited but no reply. So in addition to losing mail they’ve now perfected losing email. “Sorry, but it must have fallen out of my e-bag, governor!”

I’ve even gone to the trouble of designing a pocket map that staff could carry:

I was hoping they’d reply either by saying they thanked me for my suggestion, which I’d take to mean the days of a hairy biped walking my street were immenent; or, perhaps they’d ask me to elaborate on methods they could use to sift through applicants.

I propose a simple test. When someone writes in to apply for the job, entrust them with a parcel and give them strict instructions to deliver it to a specified address and to obtain a signature as proof that it has been delivered.

Set up a dummy address and purposely never answer the door when someone rings the bell.

Thereafter, it’s only a matter of grading them on how they handle the situation. Do they:

a) Leave it on the doorstep in the rain and wander off after a vague attempt at waiting for someone to
answer,

b) Entrust the parcel instead to your racist neighbour, who has only ever growled at you since you first met,

c) or sling it in the bin, forge your signature, and swear blind that they have delivered it?

Those that opt for: (d) Ring the office back in tears explaining how they’d tried everything short of breaking into the house to deliver the parcel but were unsuccessful- can get the job.

Then it’s only a matter of keeping the current employees up to par. I suggest a daily and mandatory requirement that before they leave for their post-round they must demonstrate that they are still capable of “fitting the shapes into the correct holes.”

Anyone failing this task should immediately be banned from his post-round and promoted to a managerial position.

*sigh* It hasn’t helped me airing any of this, so I guess the only chance I’ve got of a hairy biped ever actually delivering my mail is if a bearded Muslim postie somehow gets assigned to my street.