Kind of blue

Your taxes makes me kind of blue and dirty. 

New

I did a new thing at work today. I dropped my moped keys down an elevator shaft. It is nice to know that you can do new stuff even after more than three years on the job!

(censored) her!

Just as I was entering a building the other day I happened to overhear a mother talking to her four year old. He said something on the line of 'Hey, there is the mail man, do you think we will get some mail?´ Her retort was a snide remark that I was obviously meant to hear that basically said that 'We will probably not get something cause those guys are so useless that they deliver the mail wrong almost all the time'.

I stopped in my tracks and almost confronted her. And I should have, I should just have turned to her and asked, 'Sorry, I could not help overhearing, is there something that I do wrong? Have I delivered your mail to the wrong door by misstake?' in a pleasant tone of voice and with a nice smile. Instead I continued through the door, got in the elevator and started fuming over her remark and the fact that I was to chicken to confront her.

Now all I can say is (censored) that (censored). (censored) her. I take my job bloody serious and I am meticulous about getting the right letters delivered to the right recipient. Errors can of course occur, especially if I think, e.g., that Johnsson, M, lives with Johnsson, K while they actually lives with Johnsson, B. (A little note on the door might fix that problem by the way. We mail men are capable of reading, telepathy though, is seldom our strongest ability.)

If she had just told me that, 'sorry, my mail often gets mixed up with Johnsson's on the second floor, could you please be more careful', I would have cared, I would even have felt really bad for the mistake, Maybe I would have lost sleep over it even, but now - (censored) her and her bloody problems.

Headlines

I got a letter for a company called 'wang somethingsomething' the other day, and since the address was not correct I searched for the recipient trying to find out what to do with the letter. Googeling 'wang eskilstuna', I found this:

The perfect name for that particular profession.
At the time I found it hilarious.

God damn

God damn what a week. God damn. I hate everybody who gets the hm catalog and/or ellos catalog. Hate. God damn.

(This has been a translation of the previous post)

Fy faan

Fy faan vilken vecka. Fy faan. Jag hatar alla som får hm katalogen och/eller ellos katalogen. Hatar. Fy faan.

It happened

Today
It
Really
Happened!

Got a call from the office when I was out on my round today. I was to ring the bell when I got to one of my addressees: they had something for me. I was more than an hour away and hence had some time to think about what it might be. Maybe it would be a heap of letters that I had delivered falsely over the year. Or maybe it would be a punch in the face. I did not know and since I didn't have much else to think about I thought about it quite a lot. When I got there I actually was a bit nervous and then it turns out that they had a Christmas present for me. 'I just thought you needed a bit of encouragement' she said. My god, I was really touched by this. I have dreamt of this and then it actually happens! Now K is giving me jealous looks and think that I have something going on with all the lonely house wives that I meet all day...

Ice road truckers - bah

Driving big rigs on an ice road, whats the thrill in that? Now, driving mopeds on un-plowed icy roads, in -16°C, for three hours, delivering mail - there is a show that I would watch! (Or rather, I would very much like to watch it from the comfort of my couch, under a blanket, instead of experiencing it in real life.)

I forgot the laws of physics

I used the mailman vest yesterday when delivering mail in the snow. It is like a BabyBjörn but instead of a kid you have bundles of mail on your chest. The bundles are held together by rubber bands which I take off and put on the stiff plastic back of the vest when I start on a new bundle. As I said, yesterday it was snowing, and when I came back to the office most of me was soaked and hence I put most of my clothes in the drying cabinet, put said cabinet on 70°C and then went and had lunch. This is where the laws of physics come in. Most materials expand when they get hot, but some does quite the opposite. Rubber is one example. When rubber gets hot, the carbon chains that it is made of start to vibrate more vigorously and when they do they contract. As you have guessed by now, the rubber bands that I had put on the vest got quite a bit smaller in the heat and totally warped the stiff plastic back... So, there you have it, proof that knowledge of physics can be useful even for a mailman, sort of.

Turn of shame

You all probably know of the 'walk of fame', and the term 'walk of shame'. The 'turn of shame' is maybe not as known to the large masses, but in my life it is a frequent thing. It is when you have sorted the mail wrong on a villa street and you have to do a 180 to go back to the mailbox you just left. To me this sucks, mostly cause I like to think that I am rather careful when I sort the mail and hence should not make such mistakes and now I show to anyone out there that 'hey! look at me, I made a mistake!!!'. (This is of-course related to my total lack of self esteem, (a subject that I have been meaning to write about but have not been able to make it funny enough to publish here...)).
The 'turn of shame' does have a nastier cousin, the 'turn of even more shame', this is when you give the mail directly to the person living at an address, say 'good day' with a smile and drive of, and then realize that you have to do a 180. This just screams incompetent idiot loud enough so that everyone can hear.

Action

I was met with this sight today:

After a close study of the blood splatter pattern I deduced that it was not the result of a gunshot wound, nor a knife stabbing. I thought it was a nosebleed and continued on with what I was doing. I later met up with the cleaning ladies and got the true story behind the crime. The Posten lady had been attacked by a cat through the mailbox. It had planted a claw in her hand and managed to afflict quite a bit of damage. Sometimes it's exiting to be a mailman.

Bitter - sweet

I met a Posten-worker last Wednesday and he was not very nice. In a long tirade he expressed his view of the company I work for, bankruptcy was high on his wish list, that it would rain (I drive a moped while he sits protected in his heated car) was on top too. I do not know where he got all that hatred from, but I do know that I would never want to be like that myself. I also know that he is not alone. People hate us. We are the lowest of the low. On the bottom of the barrel. That is why it so warms my heart when, just prior to my meeting with the hateful postman, a lady stopped me and told me that I had delivered a letter wrong and I turned to her, looked at the letter with a little worried frown on my forehead and said 'Sorry but no, that letter has an handwritten address, only Posten deliver those' . The lady excused herself and I continued up the stairs. With this in mind I had no problem smiling through the bitter old mans tirade.

Its a beautiful day

On days like this it is impossible to resist. You just have to sing! 'ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!!', and as I was riding along on my moped, singing loudly, smiling from ear to ear, people lifted their heavy heads from the morning paper and porridge saying to their partner 'what is that nut-job up to???'. I was high, high on the sweetest drug of them all, the reality of leaving my job way before lunch cause all the work is finished!!! I am still high, sitting in my couch with a big grin on my face, ordering some photo-gear, the rest of the afternoon is free,
and I am singing ... 'Its a beautiful day!!!'

AAhrrgh

I was met by a loud 'AAhrrgh!!! Ride your bike faster!!!' (eller mer korrekt 'AAhrrgh! Cykla fortare!!!) on my way to work. This was rather surprising. It was also quite surprising to see someone that drunk at 6:52 in the morning, outside in the cold (-10°C), kicking an electric cabinet, yelling at people passing by. I mean, If for some strange reason I would be that intoxicated that early in the morning I would not go out into the cold. I might kick cupboards, and I might yell at people, but I would stay inside where it is warm. But then I might be wrong.

Will it not end?

It has been hard since Christmas. Lots of mail, lots of heavy catalogs, lots of 30 kg heavy boxes to lift, a couple of people short every day, long days that start in the dark and end in the dark (Ok, to be fair, we are outside in the sun 3-4 hours every day). It would be nice with a short regular day now. HEAR ME MAIL GODS! ONE SHORT EASY DAY, THAT IS ALL I ASK.

Oh, Do you have a dog? Do you live in a regular flat? Do you have a slit in the door for the mail? Did you get a catalog one of these days? Is your dog limping? I think I know why. Well, at least maybe it learned a lesson, not to bark at the mailman.

OMG

I fell in through the door after more than nine hours of hard labor today. This is the catalog season and Ellos hit us hard today with huge piles of 1.1 kg heavy catalogs. It was rough, not only due to all the heavy lifts and worn down fingers, but also mentally. After falling on the hall rug I rolled into the kitchen and curled up into a small ball. In this position I stayed almost thirty minutes before I was able to shed my clothes and take a long hot shower. Naked and clean I tumbled into bed and slept like a baby for a couple of hours. It was truly wonderful. Now there is rest. No work. But it is still there, in my mind, the heavy piles that waits in the darkness, waits to be delivered on Friday. And I also know that on top of that, another big load is on its way in. It is tough. The days off are not as sweet as they ought to be.

Smoke or air-refresher smell

If I would have to choose between a stairway that smells of cigarettes or one that smells heavily of that bathroom air-refresher thing I really know which I would take. I have one of the latter on my Torshälla round and I hate it. (They have lots of signs forbidding smoking, hence the choice between cigarette smoke and the other thing). I get nauseous after one breath in there. Maybe the smell is OK in a toilet, maybe, but in a stairway where I have to go to perform my job it is really not. I am contemplating about leaving a note saying that if they want their mail they have to loose the refreshers.

He did not want me to go

Met a cat today, one that I see from time to time, and I sat down to pet it a bit. Then he did everything in his power to stop me from leaving. Which basically means that he zigzagged in front of me as I tried to walk down the stairs and heroically/stupidly tried put his body between me and the ground I was trying to walk on. I was slowed down, but a mailman is not stopped that easily.

Speaking of words with z in them. If a designer of uniforms for some strange reason decides to put a Non YKK zipper in the clothes, he or she should be forced to motivate this choice in a three page paper that has to be scrutinized by a hard, ten men jury. This in addition to the previously mentioned demand that the designer has to use the clothes that he designs...

Nine

A stairway that you do not have to go into since you don't have any mail there (= en gratisport) is what we look forward to in this job. When you deliver to villas it is not uncommon that you just drive past mailboxes, so an entire road that you can skip (= en gratisväg) is the best thing that can happen. Today there was no such luxury. Nine, a total of nine, mailboxes was all I could skip altogether. It was a hard day at the office, that's all that I can say. The cm of snow that came the last 20 minutes did brighten up the place though, and it was rather fun to skid around with the moped in!

my mama

I love it that people still find there way here after searching for 'please don't help my mama bomb a osama obama llama diorama'. It even beats 'alexander skarsgaard nude'.

Ok, that was all I could come up with today. Or wait, I've got something else! I really love that I can feel safe when I deliver mail to Torshälla (see previous posts). I saw at least eight pit-bulls today. One came out when I opened a door, but I did not have to be scared the owner said. 'It is ok, it is a murder-dog, but he wont bite you'. After those words I felt much safer.