The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

We hear many complaints of the incivility of Post Office clerks, but there is often another side to the matter. Some day, perhaps, a literary counter clerk will give us his opinions on the civility of the British public. Think of the numerous inquiries and complaints which are addressed in an hour to the busy man or woman behind the counter on every conceivable subject of Post Office business, and we may wonder sometimes at the tempers which are not lost. In Household Words, many years ago, there was a description of the scene at a Money Order counter. “The clerks in this office ought to rival the lamented Sir Charles Bell in their knowledge of the expression of the hand. The varieties of hands that hover about the grating and are thrust through the little doorways in it are a continual study for them— or would be if they had time to spare, which assuredly they have not. The coarse-grained hand, which seems all thumb and knuckle and no nail, and which takes up money or puts it down with such an odd, clumsy, lumbering touch: the retail trader's hand, which clinks it up and tosses it over with a bounce: the housewife's hand, which has a lingering propensity to keep some of it back, and to drive a bargain by not paying in the last shilling or so of the sum for which her Order is obtained: the quick, the slow, the coarse, the fine, the sensitive and dull, the ready and unready— they are always at the grating all day long.” And the Post Office man or woman has to humour the possessors of these hands, to be patient with the foolish, to be restrained with the impatient, “to be merciful towards the absurd,” and to pay out or receive money all the time. Not all men and very few women understand the mysteries of change and commissions, and when they don't understand they suspect, and when they suspect they become unreasonable. It is difficult to say whether the public is most touchy when cashing or purchasing an Order. But in both cases it thinks it is being done by the long-suffering individual behind the counter.