nasal drawl. ‘You still here, buddy?’ He jostles past me.
They immediately
get to sorting the post that they’ve brought back from their runs.
‘You’ll see in a
while where this comes from, buddy. This is a big place. I have 23 mail
stations on my run. Len has 16 on his. You’ll be doing the D-3 run. That has 13
mail stations. I’ll show yiz around it myself. Used to be my run.’
I follow their
lead and just press ahead with the mail sorting. When we’re done with the
envelopes and packages in the carts, Len produces a big plastic crate full of
more.
‘When there’s
nothing else to sort, do the ones in this bucket.’
‘These are the
tricky ones,’ Al says. He shows me one. ‘See here? Magazine subscription.
Addressed to a fella called Tom Polvell. Come over.’ He leads me to an ancient
computer terminal. ‘Type in the name here. See, no such fella in the company.
Never has been. But using my expertise I detect that it’s actually for Tom
Powell. He’s in building D-12.’ He sticks the magazine in the T. Powell pigeon
hole. ‘If it comes back to us, we’ll try again. Now, try one yourself.’
I pick up a
letter with a hand-written name on it, almost unreadable. I type in my best
guess. Darragh Mitta. Nothing. There are a few Darraghs, but none with a
surname that looks anything like Mitta. I check through the M surnames. I spot
one that might fit the bill. Darren Mills. Al is not entirely pleased to be
surprised at this.
‘It might work.
At nine I’ll take yiz on your first run.’
At 8:55 we start
loading the D-3 cart with its mail, emptying each pigeon hole and
elastic-banding each little stack of sorted mail. We put a plastic cover over
the cart, don our coats before beginning the long car-park crossing through the
rain to cubic building D-3. Inside, Al greets the security guard with a ribald
word, and hands over the first stack. Through to the main ground-floor office
we make three drops and three pick-ups. Same thing on the three floors above.
Then back through the rain to the mailroom to resume sorting. By now I am
tired, hungry and thirsty. Still no sign of an upcoming break, and I know
better than to ask when there’ll be one.
Candy comes
over. ‘How did he do on the run?’
‘Seemed all
right, Candy. Can he manage the next one on his own - that’ll be the teller.
Got it all stored away in the memory banks, buddy?’
‘Think so, yeah.’
I hope this contains the trace of superiority I had in mind. Unless I’ve missed
something fundamental, only a moron could manage to forget the D-3 run. The
only difficult bit of this job so far is memorising their bizarre pigeon-holing
system.
Al takes down a
battered old CD player from on top of one of the presses. On goes some horrible
old Wolfe Tonesey crap, and so we spend the next stretch in the mailroom
sorting letters to the sound of ‘ra songs pounded out to a baying live crowd in
some god-forsaken Dub-a-lin venue. So loud it’s not even possible to ask
questions. I wing it as best I can until the time comes to load the cart again
and cross the car park solo to D-3.
Helen listens
with disconcerting eagerness to my tale. I recount the entire day, omitting the
bit about Candy’s mini-dress but including all other pertinent details, from
the depressing bus ride to the haphazardness of the pigeon-holing system to the
fact that from tomorrow I’ll have to wear a uniform. Candy asked me my size
just after lunch, and before I went home presented me with five of each
garment, one for each day of the week. Emblazoned on the shirt is the name
Richard, an ex-employee whom Al took obvious pleasure in telling me is dead.
‘Enjoy your
lunch, George?’ he asked me during the afternoon.
‘Yeah, it wasn’t
bad.’
‘Like the
canteen?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘That’s a pity,
cos from tomorrow on you’ll be aytin with us on the loading dock.’
Al is proving to
be a bit of a fucker, all things considered.
‘Mailboys
They immediately
get to sorting the post that they’ve brought back from their runs.
‘You’ll see in a
while where this comes from, buddy. This is a big place. I have 23 mail
stations on my run. Len has 16 on his. You’ll be doing the D-3 run. That has 13
mail stations. I’ll show yiz around it myself. Used to be my run.’
I follow their
lead and just press ahead with the mail sorting. When we’re done with the
envelopes and packages in the carts, Len produces a big plastic crate full of
more.
‘When there’s
nothing else to sort, do the ones in this bucket.’
‘These are the
tricky ones,’ Al says. He shows me one. ‘See here? Magazine subscription.
Addressed to a fella called Tom Polvell. Come over.’ He leads me to an ancient
computer terminal. ‘Type in the name here. See, no such fella in the company.
Never has been. But using my expertise I detect that it’s actually for Tom
Powell. He’s in building D-12.’ He sticks the magazine in the T. Powell pigeon
hole. ‘If it comes back to us, we’ll try again. Now, try one yourself.’
I pick up a
letter with a hand-written name on it, almost unreadable. I type in my best
guess. Darragh Mitta. Nothing. There are a few Darraghs, but none with a
surname that looks anything like Mitta. I check through the M surnames. I spot
one that might fit the bill. Darren Mills. Al is not entirely pleased to be
surprised at this.
‘It might work.
At nine I’ll take yiz on your first run.’
At 8:55 we start
loading the D-3 cart with its mail, emptying each pigeon hole and
elastic-banding each little stack of sorted mail. We put a plastic cover over
the cart, don our coats before beginning the long car-park crossing through the
rain to cubic building D-3. Inside, Al greets the security guard with a ribald
word, and hands over the first stack. Through to the main ground-floor office
we make three drops and three pick-ups. Same thing on the three floors above.
Then back through the rain to the mailroom to resume sorting. By now I am
tired, hungry and thirsty. Still no sign of an upcoming break, and I know
better than to ask when there’ll be one.
Candy comes
over. ‘How did he do on the run?’
‘Seemed all
right, Candy. Can he manage the next one on his own - that’ll be the teller.
Got it all stored away in the memory banks, buddy?’
‘Think so, yeah.’
I hope this contains the trace of superiority I had in mind. Unless I’ve missed
something fundamental, only a moron could manage to forget the D-3 run. The
only difficult bit of this job so far is memorising their bizarre pigeon-holing
system.
Al takes down a
battered old CD player from on top of one of the presses. On goes some horrible
old Wolfe Tonesey crap, and so we spend the next stretch in the mailroom
sorting letters to the sound of ‘ra songs pounded out to a baying live crowd in
some god-forsaken Dub-a-lin venue. So loud it’s not even possible to ask
questions. I wing it as best I can until the time comes to load the cart again
and cross the car park solo to D-3.
Helen listens
with disconcerting eagerness to my tale. I recount the entire day, omitting the
bit about Candy’s mini-dress but including all other pertinent details, from
the depressing bus ride to the haphazardness of the pigeon-holing system to the
fact that from tomorrow I’ll have to wear a uniform. Candy asked me my size
just after lunch, and before I went home presented me with five of each
garment, one for each day of the week. Emblazoned on the shirt is the name
Richard, an ex-employee whom Al took obvious pleasure in telling me is dead.
‘Enjoy your
lunch, George?’ he asked me during the afternoon.
‘Yeah, it wasn’t
bad.’
‘Like the
canteen?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘That’s a pity,
cos from tomorrow on you’ll be aytin with us on the loading dock.’
Al is proving to
be a bit of a fucker, all things considered.
‘Mailboys
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