Christmas may have gone the way of the turkey carcass, but for most of us, there are still a few days left of indulgence before we head back to the workplace. For the men and women of the An Post depot on Limerick’s Dock Road, it has been a hectic few weeks but any hopes of a relaxing New Year are tempered by the knowledge that there are only 360 days to the next Christmas delivery.
by Aoife McLaughlin
aoife@limerickpost.ie
IT’S the most wonderful time of the year… there’ll be parties for hosting, cards and presents for posting…
Indeed, it is the most wonderful time of year, and as many of us counted down the last few hours left at work and children counted the “sleeps” left until Mr. Claus left specially requested gifts beneath fairy lit trees, lets not forget those busy workers dressed in green, who have sorted tirelessly through towers of packages and presents while we slept.
Big boxes, small parcels, teddy shaped packages, gifts of love and sentiment came from far and wide to greet us when we woke.
And, no this wasn’t the work of Father Christmas and his merry little elves, this was just the daily routine for the 220 staff at the An Post Depot on Limerick’s Dock Road.
Postmen and women call to each and every one of our houses up to 261 times a year or more. With a brimful mailbag and bicycle in tow, they deliver our post in the early hours of the morning, often greeted by a bark from a disgruntled pet pooch or groggy but courteous hello as we leave our homes to shuffle to work and school.
But during the Christmas period, the mail deliveries start to swell with cards and presents 98 per cent of which, will be processed, sorted and delivered in just 24 hours.
From postbox to mailbox
As a woman who heavily relies on last minute deliveries from online clothing companies, logging on daily in anticipation to “track my item”, I was intrigued by the whole postal process. So, I took a trip to the Limerick post office depot for some insight into this important service.
I was met at the front gate of the Dock road hub, by Acting Delivery Service Manager Brian Murphy. Although it is their busiest time of year, Brian kindly explained just what happens after we drop those envelopes into that iconic green box.
“We normally deal with around 100,000 items a night but, at Christmas time you are looking at up to half a million in one night,” says Brian.
Mail is collected from the various post boxes and post offices around the city and county and are brought by truck to the depot from 1pm up until 8pm on any given day. The mail is then sorted at the depot to either go to Cork for letter processing or Portlaoise for packages.
“All the mail is gone out of here at 8 o’clock in the evening and we have trucks returning from 11pm until 6 in the morning. We then process the mail over the course of the night for the delivery staff to deliver it to your door in the morning,” he explains.
“That’s all in the same night and we get the mail back here to Limerick from Cork and Portlaoise and we then sort it into what’s called a ‘route sort’. The timeline for packages and letters are the same and we have 98 per cent next day delivery in the country. Two hundred and twenty staff have been involved in that process.”
Up to 87 postmen and postwomen deliver mail everyday to 900 houses each in the city and 400 each in the county.
Trends
The postal service has experienced a lot of change in recent years, especially with the rise of e-billing, which has had knock-on affect on staffing.
“There has been a decrease in staff for the past several years since the downturn. There was an increase before that and in the past several years we have seen a decrease. There would be reviews done here on all levels every three years and the whole office has been redesigned to accommodate the volume of mail we currently have,” said Brian.
As the service has seen a considerable decline in letters over the years, online shopping has been on the rise, particularly for clothes and books.
And the post office staff are the first to notice the new trend.
“We are seeing a lot of these small little Chinese packets. I am not quite sure what people are ordering – they are like electronics from China but there has been a huge increase in that lately.”
Whilst on the subject of mysterious packages, the Limerick depot has often played host to sting operations for Customs and Excise, tracking incoming or outgoing packages suspected of containing illegal substances.
“The guards would come here on a regular basis waiting for some person to come sign for a package, a package that the drug squad would have been tracking.”
As my interest peaks, I ask Brian what kind of things staff have seen come into the post office. I imagine it maybe easy to tell what exactly is in a package by it’s shape. I picture all sorts of obviously shaped items spilling from the back of the delivery trucks but, to my disappointment, I am assured that the only time post office workers see what is in a package is when the item is undeliverable due to an incorrect address and the lack of return-to-sender details.
“There are definitely some unusual items that come through the post. We actually have an Aladdin’s Cave over in the Return Letter Office”, Brian reveals.
Aladdin’s Cave
And without further ado I am brought across the yard, up two flights of stairs to “the cave”. It is here I meet Operations Manager, Adrian Gordon.
I ask Adrian and Brian about the most unusual things they have unearthed at the Returned Letters Office.
They show me a glass cupboard with a toy car and some brick-a-brack when I’m distracted by Adrian brandishing some sort of animal horn in front of me. “It’s the horn of the last unicorn in Ireland,” he jokes.
As it transpires the horn was that of a North Kerry bull and not of a unicorn. It was almost a foot long, hollow and formed from hair with a black and cream marbling effect.
“This came through about a year or two ago. The majority of items we get here are undeliverable and we would try and return them to sender but if we can’t find the sender’s details well then we end up with them here. This cow’s horn would be one of the most memorable we have seen come through. We get literally everything I suppose you could say from a needle to a small anchor.”
I’m then presented with a clear plastic zip file with what appears to be old letters.
What I didn’t expect was how old the actually letters are. I find myself holding an ancient looking envelope with an evenly ripped edging across the top, that only a letter opener could inflict. The paper has yellowed with age and a dark navy stamp features a white outline of King George of England’s head. In beautifully inked scroll it reads “sender: SS Olympic” and is dated 1934.
“I believe the Olympic was a sister ship of the Titanic. It was found in a packet of old letters that someone was posting to somebody else but it was undeliverable. Obviously it’s quite old, so we would hold on to that,” explains Adrian.
I was also shown a ten dollar bond certificate issued in the United States to raise money for the Irish state. It was dated 1920.
Both Brian and Adrian explain the importance ensuring that an address is correct and that all mail has a proper return address.
“We try to return the items to senders but if we have no senders details, the next step, generally with items we can’t return, like clothing, books or CDs, is to donate them to charity. If it is stuff like papers or items of a personal nature, we will destroy them.
Obviously with items like these we will hold them, hoping that at some time in the future, we will get them returned.”
Asking have they ever had a case where an unusual item has been returned, I am told the story of a Nazi compass from the 1936 Berlin Olympics that found its way into the “Aladdin’s Cave” at the Limerick Depot for four years.
“We did an item on a television programme last year and we had some Nazi memorabilia. A guy actually recognized the compass from the television programme and once we were actually able to authenticate that it was his, we were able to return it to him.
“We are the most trusted organization in the country, so we don’t want to be opening people’s letters or packages and that’s why we are encouraging everybody to put a return address on it so if we can’t deliver it, we will be able return it back to the sender”, Adrian explains.
As my visit draws to a close, there is just one question I have to ask, given the time of year it is: “Does Santa Clause get all his Santa letters?”
Brian tell me they see thousands of Santa letters each year and that Santa himself uses An Post to reply to every single child.
“All of Santa’s letters get posted out to every child, the Sunday before Christmas Day… he does have a little help from the Post office elves though.”
