A Real Mail Bastion: Postal Crews ‘Suck It Up’ in Traditional Yule Rush

Tom Fischetti was just one person standing in line at the post office. He wore a black cap and a windbreaker and held a package addressed to Hewitt, Tex. The carefully wrapped box contained clothes for Fischetti’s three grandsons.

He saw it as nothing less than a symbol for world peace.

“The reason I’m sending out so many packages this year is that I’m suddenly more introspective,” said Fischetti, who lives near Old Town and runs a telecommunications service. “I feel more giving toward family. I’m deeply troubled by the world situation. I’m sick of all the killing. I want to do something . . . anything. I figured the best way would be to reach out to family.”

Fischetti frets about society becoming too mobile. He has two children and a fourth grandchild on the way. None of them live anywhere near San Diego.

He misses them.

He uses the mail to keep in touch.

In past years, Fischetti grumbled about having to send out packages. He muttered under his breath about increasingly long lines, overtime-weary postal workers and customers tired of standing and waiting their turn. He wondered about the point of the holiday.

And then suddenly, a revelation that Ebenezer Scrooge might best understand.

“What do you have,” Fischetti asked, “if you don’t have family?”

Each holiday season, San Diegans who hail from such places as Hewitt,

Tex., queue up in meandering lines at the central post office on Midway Drive, waiting to send out hosannas to the ones they remember.

“This is the season when people instinctively and naturally feel close to those they love,” said Ken Boyd, a spokesman for the central post office. “It’s a time for enhancing family ties, for bonding. We at the post office play a role in that.”

Boyd said mail volume is up 50% and that this year’s holiday onslaught may be the biggest ever.

“You’ve never had more people living in San Diego than you have right now,” he said, “regardless of where they’re from.”

On a “normal” day, Boyd said, the central post office handles 7 million to 8 million pieces of mail. During the holiday season, the figure climbs to a difficult 12 million pieces a day. He called the two weeks leading up to Christmas the most intense of the year--by far--for postal employees.

“But that doesn’t mean we see it as a burden,” he said. “We’re geared up and prepared every year. Our people work overtime, and then a lot of outside help is hired. We know the people are coming, so we’re ready for ‘em.”

And come they do, in box-wielding after box-wielding wave. Postal clerk Alan Magee said many are a weary mass by the time they and their “gifts” of assorted sizes and shapes show up at his station. If Magee has to turn down a package that fails to meet specifications, well, sometimes the scene isn’t pretty.

He’s seen tennis rackets wrapped loosely in grocery sacks, with handles protruding. He’s seen great big items with little bitty items stacked on top--a postal no-no.

Jerry Soltis, who works in the drafty, warehouse-like sorting area, said Christmas means hard work and long, leg-straining hours.

“Sure, you work a lot of overtime,” he said. “You get real tired. You’re standin’ most of the time. Last Monday, we handled more than 3 million pieces of mail.”

Just Saying ‘Merry Christmas’

Stephen Ojeda, who works in the “facing and canceling” area, has seen Christmases come and go in his 15 years as a postal employee. Each year, he tries to “suck it up” for the avalanche of work--the hours, the standing, the gargantuan volume of mail from relatives wishing only to say, “Merry Christmas.”

“It’s 11, 12 hours a day, six days a week,” Ojeda said. “It’s tiring, but you do get used to it. It’s just part of the job. It makes it kind of a tiring holiday to anticipate, but look at it this way:

“If people didn’t have us to sort and deliver this mail, a lot of people couldn’t even say Merry Christmas. That’s what we do. We help people say Merry Christmas.”