Your Feet Don’t Hurt As Much

Well, I took a walk down memory lane today.

The new postal depot had its grand opening and all were welcome to come and see Canada Posts vision of the future. It is named Sunridge Depot. Whoever comes up with the names for the depots has almost no imagination as this particular depot is on Sunridge Blvd. The depot in the south end of the city is called Deerfoot South, and I guess that the depot that they are building in the north west will more than likely be the North-West Depot. Now, as I am writing this I am thinking what a bunch of doozers, but in reality it is probably done this way so that the goofs and doofs working at the Post Office don’t get things mixed up.

There were hamburgers and hot dogs, juice and Halloween candy. I just wanted to see the place cleaned up. I had been there for a few weeks and literally watched the walls go up. The letter carriers came in and were tweaking their cases to make things easier tomorrow when they come in to work. The head honchos were milling about trying to get some kind of credit for a job well done. I thought they would throw their arms out patting themselves on the back. Everyone was smiling and just happy to get out of the plant. The consensus is that the plant is a black hole that sucks all joy and life out of anyone that spends any length of time there. Like everything though, the job is as good or as bad as you let it be.

I had a lot of fun catching up with some of the people that I once worked with. Most of them are getting closer to retirement and are pretty much just marking time. The changes will be harder on them than on the younger people, because the old axiom “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” really does apply.  I found that towards the end of my time there, I would listen at the meetings to the changes they wanted made and then continue to do it the old way if at all possible. I guess that is one of the reasons for retirement.

I am not sure if mankind is ready to have long lives. Most of us don’t make good use of our good years and the “Golden Years” are spent grumbling about how the kids today have no work ethic and everything was better in the good old days. I think Plato complained about the same thing and somehow we have managed to muddle through. We have managed to build a civilization with a more or less productive, caring populace.

Enough of that. Today I laughed and talked and tried to help in any way that I could, but mostly I was just a guy they used to work with who was fun back in the day and seems to be pretty happy now. I guess I am the poster child for early postal retirement. There is life after the post office, it is just a little slower paced and your feet don’t hurt as much.