Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 29, 1993                   TAG: 9401150011
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T SWEAT IT IN PILOT

Now, here's a boon patrons of Pilot Post Office have been waiting for, nay, even demanding, for years!

This post office, which not too long ago was also a general store complete with wood stove and rocking chair, is now so thoroughly into the 20th century that the postal boxes - and I'm talking now about the ones inside, the ones that require a key - these gleaming, bronze-looking, indoor postal boxes now number well above 20.

This up-to-date, busy post office now heeds all modern requirements and regulations, too. Postmaster Gary has three different scales upon which to weigh the mail! He has at least one example of every single stamp! He has patrons as far as the eye can see! Even farther, because you can't see my house from there. (Although you can see a little creek that floods right often and a parking lot for gravel trucks.)

And now, this post office, where sometimes three muddy cars are parked at once, is promising the prompt and efficient attention to detail that we've come to expect from our U.S. Postal Service; the very same prompt and efficient attention to detail that's also being promised, I'm sure, in post offices across the nation. Imagine that! We who stand and wait in Pilot will be served just as quickly now as those who stand and wait in Washington, D.C., New York City, St. Louis, San Francisco and Check!

``Service in 5 Minutes or Less!''

What a relief! No more need for idle chats at the window with Gary or Gerald. In and out. Get your stamps, get your mail, get yourself gone. Simple as that.

No more need to pass the time of day in the lobby (which is 6' x 8' if it's an inch) should you happen to run into Jane or Bill or Danielle while you're there.

No more waiting while someone in front of you in line (and I have stood in line at the Pilot Post Office at least twice that I can remember), no more waiting while that slow someone decides between the relative merits of first class and third class when sending a package to her grandmother in Copper Hill.

No, thanks to the federal government, now even we who patronize the Pilot Post Office are assured of courteous swiftness from our postal workers as they complete their appointed rounds.

Of course, we've always had courteous swiftness. Except, perhaps, when the snow's up to the wheel wells on Gerald's truck or when the catalogs come in. But even on those occasions, the courtesy's been constant. And, I might add, about as swift as we've wanted it.

Apparently, the U.S. Postal Service has gotten the idea that we who live in Pilot, and in other places like Pilot, go to the post office merely to get our mail. Doesn't that strike you as odd? If we wanted high-powered efficiency, timetables, goals assessment and deadlines, believe you me, we wouldn't be living here.

\ Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.