Royal Mail

I am one of the spoiled 300 million Americans who have an expectation that when I post something by mail that it will get delivered.  Based on my experience here, I imagine that my friends from other locales (and David) will be a bit confused by this notion.  The rest of us will benefit from this real conversation I recently had at a post office window:

Me: (letter in hand) I want to post this but I want them to have to sign for it and I would like to be notified when it is signed for.  I am not sure what that is called.  

Clerk: We can have it signed for but we can’t notify you.  But we do have something that you can look up on line and it will tell you when it was delivered.  

Me: That’ll be great.

Clerk: Do you want it signed for with guaranteed delivery or do you want it signed for if it happens to get there?

Me: (Perplexed look) What? 

Clerk:  (with just a tinge of annoyance in her voice) If you send it ‘signed for’ guaranteed, it will definitely get there.  If you send it just ‘signed for’ it just goes with the rest of it. (She points vaguely at the rest of the post office behind her with an impending sense of doom.)

Me: (Even more perplexed look) Doesn’t all the mail get delivered? 

Clerk: (Nonchalant) Not necessarily.

Me: (Silence, jaw on floor)

Clerk: (Still nonchalant) We handle millions of letters.

Me: (Still silent, jaw still on floor)

Clerk: (In a tone that suggests this should be obvious) They just get lost.  

It goes on from there, but that was the entertaining bit.  Friends and family still basking in the glow of a postal system that actually delivers the mail may be tempted to think that this is a clever sales pitch:  Use fear to sell expensive delivery services.  If this is the case, the entire delivery service is part of the marketing department.  I am not sure how many times we have failed to receive posted letters from the government, banks, and other commercial entities in the past 22 months living in the UK.  But I am certain that whatever the number is, it is far larger than the number from the previous 30 years in the US.  And I love the card that this fellow blogger made.  

It needs a little explanation though for those of you on the western shore of the Atlantic: There are these cards that the Royal Mail leaves when they have to deliver something requiring a signature (pictured above).  But both my wife and I have experienced finding these cards amongst our post when we were home.  Apparently this is not a unique experience because that fellow bogger has posted online a response card for applying to your door (pictured below).
Although based on signs on the doors of the two houses I lived in so far as well as the number of time there is mail in the house that is not ours, there is significant evidence to suggsest that if postal workers in London are literate, it is not in English.  

All that being said, ‘Going Postal’ is not an expression here.  So the US might want to rethink the cost of such an efficient postal system.  Perhaps the US should let postal workers play 52-pickup with the letters.  Although I can report with some confidence that whatever postal games are happening in the bowels of Royal Mail facilities, they certainly do not make them any happier.  I have never seen an unhappier looking group of people.  Most of the Royal Mail facilities around here are only open for 4 hours per day, so it certainly isn't dealing with the likes of me.   This might be a London thing.  Whenever you see a country postal worker portrayed on the telly, they are always the most pleasant of souls.  Of course, this may be the jewel of Europe as far as post delivery service.  I remember when I was visiting Rome several years ago, a hotel clerk told me that I should walk the extra 12 blocks to the Vatican post office if I wanted my postcards to get to their destination during our lifetimes.  I had never considered the postal service has a historical preservation service.  Our ancestors will be grateful for it I am sure.