The Self-Serving Postie

Yesterday I dashed outside with a passion because I'd spotted the postie driving across our front lawn again. And not only that, as before I spotted and watched him driving right over the sprinklers again. I felt myself beginning to foam at the mouth.

Only a day earlier had I been to the distribution centre complaining about the postie's having knocked over one of my sprinklers, a brand new one on top of that, just to save three seconds on his tour, yet by producing half an hour's worth of work for me since the sprinkler he'd knocked over had to be fixed again - and paid for. No need to say that I had to fix it interrupting the work I had been doing, calculating the time this would push my targeted deadline forward.

(Microsoft ClipArt)

The lady at the distribution centre had been very friendly and had promised to pass this on to the manager and added that, should it happen again, I might have to come in and see them a little earlier during the day, say, by 2 pm since the managers for the posties' territories left at that time since they always had to start early in the morning. No need to say that there was a bit of a conflict of interests here, too.

Yet, that sounded promising enough, which made it easy for me to show the best of my understanding for the managers' position. And somehow I must have allowed the thought to sink in that just by talking with someone at the distribution centre, the problem had been solved once and for all along with the feel-good exercise of making my complaint not sound too much like a complaint and expressing my insight into the staff member's position that she personally, after all, hadn't done anything wrong nor broken a single sprinkler.

Fat chance. Once outside, therefore, I grabbed the postie by his shoulders and dragged him off his motorbike. Watching the bike drive on and into the nearest power pole I wriggled the postie in such a way that I ended up getting him into a tight headlock.

Dragging him over to the letterbox like that, I then banged his head, well-protected by his helmet which made it all the easier for me to go ahead with my temper, against the front of the letterbox several times shouting "Will you friggin' do that again or won't you!?!?!" After which I let him flop onto the lawn.

Which is when I came back to my senses. And so much for my daydream that had been crossing my mind inside the micro-space of twenty mega-seconds. It wouldn't have gone down well with the police or the postal management. And the local paper would have had a nice story to tell on the front page at my expense. Luckily, I still had a solid barrier of decent education and a relatively reliable ability to reason.

I decided instead to drive down to the nearest gardening centre as soon as possible and buy some shrubs to fill the gaps the postie had been using for his shortcut.