Mel's Memo to Postal Service - Don't Hire Any More Men

By Mel Carriere

There I was, keeping my finger on the Postal Service's somewhat feeble, irregular pulse, my job as your commentator/blogger of all things postal - when I stumbled across, or should I say damn near stepped into this steaming pile.  Yes - unbelievably disgusting as it is, somewhere in Ohio a mailman got caught dropping his drawers and emptying his bowels by some kid's swing set, and I can't say I'm surprised.

Must have been a slow news day in Cincinnati, the town where it was my childhood ambition to join Les Nessman doing the pork report at good old WKRP, but broadcast journalism in southern Ohio is not always the glamour depicted on that 70s sitcom.  For instance, imagine being cub reporter Ken Brown here, trying to climb the ladder of news reporting, and you get stuck doing poop patrol.  Then again, these days, letter carriers getting caught in the act seems to be pretty big news, sometimes even preempting congressional investigations, mass shootings, and natural disasters.  Us getting caught with our figurative and literal pants down gives the public a certain self-satisfied thrill.  See honey I told you.  Look at what those overpaid civil servants are doing on our nickel.

But this time, as my cyberfoot nearly splattered in this stool stack, Miami Steamer, Cleveland hot waffle, Freddy fazbear pizza, Wisconsin floor buffer, Lake Erie logjam, whatever you want to call it because there are thousands of synonyms (as I discovered to my great mirth on urban thesaurus) - rather than being filled with righteous indignation as I usually am - Oh the inhumanity!, instead it occurred to me that it is always male letter carriers who get caught committing outrageous, disgusting, illegal, frequently immoral acts on the clock.  Which leads me to the conclusion that our beloved sister Mail Ladies in blue either don't do these things, or they are smart enough not to get caught.

For instance, have you ever seen a caught in the act video of a female letter carrier chucking a package clearly marked Fragile over a ten foot high fence?  No, women are more concerned about the ethical dilemma of the thing, or else they are more afraid of getting in trouble, or else their keen forensic scientist eyes that instantly know when one tiny spoon is out of place in the kitchen have already spotted the hidden camera that knucklehead Joe Schmoe mailman failed to see. For one or all of these reasons, our girls of the satchel will drive a mile down an alley and up a hill to deliver the package intact, whereas we all know Joe Schmoe just wants to get the job done, so he says screw it it's not mine and gives it the old heave-ho.

Another aspect of daily carrier life that segregates the sexes involves the alleged abuse of animals.  Women think dogs are their babies, they carry them around in handbags in supermarkets, much to the chagrin of us husky towers of testosterone, who hate getting yapped at when we're trying to remember which kind of chicken broth Momma told us to bring home, where we keep our own uncultured curs rolling around happily in the backyard mud.

Whether this cruelty caught on camera is real or simply self-defense is beyond the scope of this blog, but has been the subject of others, so often that it raises a collective yawn among most readers, who don't like a good story watered down with the truth.  In any case, it always seems to be a male mailman caught kicking, pepper-spraying, possibly just injuring the delicate psyches of little yipping furr-balls by yelling obscenities at them.  Female letter carriers, on the other hand, who perhaps lack the hormone-fueled obsession to prove who's the boss, who's your Daddy, etc, wisely avoid confrontations, or perhaps again possess some innate, exclusively female sixth sense that can sniff out electronic vigilance.  It could be they really are emptying Exxon-Valdez size tankers of pepper spray into the naked eyeballs of pooches everyday, but they avoid getting recorded doing it.

This leads us to the most recent flagrant, scandalous, nose-turning, stomach-churning violation of postal decorum, this Ohio carrier caught dropping an extra, unscanned package by some tyke's playground equipment, which I suppose would be option 6, garage or other, if and when a barcode becomes available, which I understand is currently in development at Postal Proving Grounds in a secret, unventilated bunker deep beneath 1 L'enfant Plaza.

Let's face it, women don't commit this kind of outrage because they are more discrete about their bodily functions.  A man will drop a load in just about any hole in the ground, or dump one out in the open under the blue sky, just like livestock, if no pit or hollow is immediately available.  Women, however, are even picky about using designated facilities equipped with plumbing and running water.  As proof, on a recent road trip my own darling but constipated wife held it for six days, not willing to expose her delicate derriere to potential slimy microbes lurking unseen on the toilet seats of rest stops, fast food joints, or hotel rooms.  Women can do this, because they possess an extra excretory organ that allows them to convert their waste to powder form, like Tang or Instant Breakfast, until it can be mixed with water and safely disposed of.  Men, on the other hand, are like frightened birds who immediately empty their bowels before flying from the first sign of trouble.

Isn't it always one of our Postal Mother Hens at morning stand-up talks, holding up a Gatorade bottle left in her vehicle that is filled with some yellowish fluid that is probably not lemon flavor, because the receptacle clearly says "Fruit Punch."  As she rants and raves about how utterly disgusting, not to mention indecent this is, she is not looking toward the women, standing out as spotless pillars of virtue in their unstained, neatly pressed uniforms, but over in the dunce corner where the wrinkled, soiled, unpolished bad boys hang out, lowering their heads shamefully with a wasn't me look, even though we know it could have been any one of them, at one time or another.

Men are pigs, is what I'm getting at, but unlike swine they are not particularly bright.  The reason why the male penitentiaries are overcrowded is because men make lousy criminals.  They don't know how to cover their tracks or clean up their DNA, so they get caught every time.

Therefore, this  revolting act in Ohio leads me to propose that from here on out, the Postal Service only hire women.  The public perception of the organization would immediately improve and there would be no more embarrassing caught in the act incidents that ruin digestion for masses of Americans watching the News during the evening meal.  Productivity would also go up and profits would return, because while we gorillas are mostly bragging and chest-thumping, the ladies are going about their jobs with quiet diligence and efficiency.

Of course, the Post Office might want to keep a few of us around, because we men can be cute and funny, and the workplace would be downright boring without us. Any other zoo besides the PO, ya gotta pay admission to watch the apes.

The only place where I can't identify any differences between men and women in the postal workplace is driving.  I don't have any statistics to back me up, but I am sure men and women are involved in motor vehicle accidents on an equal basis.  Just yesterday, for instance, I nearly hit some lady who swung across three or four lanes to make a right turn in front of me.  Dem bitches be driving crazy.

Postal Tsunami Musical Guest - Fine Young Cannibals "You drive me crazy."

Image courtesy of Fox 19 in Cinncinnati, Ohio