Sunday Services : Post Offices Open for the Holiday Rush Attract Appreciative Customers

On a weekend when Angelenos elbowed their way through crowds of shoppers in Century City, grew old waiting for elevators at the Beverly Center and waged war over parking spots on Rodeo Drive, the Postal Service did its best to make the last-minute Christmas crush less crushing.

In what is becoming a holiday tradition, three dozen post offices were opened Sunday throughout the Southland, enabling customers to mail packages without the normal weekday hassle while clerks earned time-and-a-half--and many more thank-yous than usual.

At the Bicentennial Station on Beverly Boulevard in the Fairfax District, the parking lot was full and two dozen customers were waiting outside in line long before the 10 a.m. opening, undeterred by signs on the door that said, “Closed Sunday.”

“It’s nice of them,” said Benita Brazier, a script supervisor from West Hollywood, who was shipping needlework pillows to

loved ones in Paris and Hawaii, in-line skates to her nephews in Washington and a House Of Blues T-shirt to a friend’s three-year-old son in London who had outgrown the one she sent him last year.

Brazier’s stack of boxes was the tallest until Max Ember arrived with eight identical cartons all marked “Fragile.” Inside were pounds of Christmas cookies--gingerbread, brownies, lemon bars--that he bakes each year. “My parents will have a stroke that a Jewish boy spends this much time on Christmas,” he said.

Normally, the only post office open in the area Sunday is the Worldway Postal Center, on West Century Boulevard near Los Angeles International Airport, which does business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and is popular with insomniacs calling at 4 a.m. for ZIP Code information and procrastinators showing up at 11:59 p.m. when real estate, business or income taxes are due.

But the Postal Service decided several years ago to offer extra service before Christmas. This Sunday was the middle of three when many other post offices are opened, and it was expected to be the busiest day of the trio, with 300,000 pieces of mail anticipated in the Los Angeles district alone, said Larry Dozier, a Postal Service spokesman.

The customers--who had heard about the special schedule on the radio, from their mail carriers or from friends--were a jollier bunch than on a normal workday, laden with gifts and cards for distant relatives and friends as they pulled up at open post offices in locales such as Eagle Rock, Rancho Park, East Los Angeles, Van Nuys, Santa Ana and Thousand Oaks.

“Boy, am I glad that they’re here,” said Ralph Bruno, a bus driver, who all week had been eyeing an “Open Sunday” sign at the Reseda Boulevard post office in Northridge. “I always do things at the last minute so them being open helps me out. I was up at 5 o’clock this morning writing Christmas cards. Then I got a baby sitter for my son and now I’m here.”

At the Bicentennial Station post office, Ember, a screenwriter, noted that the real delight was that only holiday customers were there. “What drives you crazy the rest of the time is what I call post office junkies,” he said. “The ones who come every day and buy four stamps.”

The four clerks who volunteered to work for time-and-a-half at the Bicentennial Station also enjoyed the day’s unique clientele, who were less harried and more appreciative than those who squeeze in a trip to the post office at lunch hour or brave the Saturday crowds.

“Their attitude is completely different,” said clerk Yolanda Smith, who dressed for the occasion in a Santa hat. “It’s all ‘Thanks for being open,’ ‘Is my package gonna make it?’ They’re smiling. Look at those faces. We don’t see that most of the time.”

As if to prove the point, the customer at Smith’s window offered to run out and buy her a doughnut.

The good cheer was contagious. Next in line was Anne Miller, an elderly woman recovering from a broken rib, who mentioned in passing that she would have to take a bus the several blocks home because the package she had come to claim was too heavy to carry.

“Don’t be silly,” said Christal Chacon, a total stranger picking up a package at the next window. “I’ll drive you.”

Another of the clerks, Bruce Bennett, said he is tired of being maligned as an incompetent bureaucrat and ignored except when a disgruntled postal worker goes on a shooting spree.

“We are trying to undermine the old myths about government employees,” he said of the Sunday sessions. “This shows the postal service really cares about you and it’s not just lip service.”

But old myths die hard, especially when customers encounter stereotypical inefficiency on just the day the post office is putting its best foot forward. That’s what happened to Robert Fries, a flight attendant from Hollywood, who called the automated Postal Answer Line this weekend to find out which stations were open Sunday.

The Postal Answer Line is a vexing system, requiring a touch-tone phone, paper and pencil and enough patience to sit through interminable instructions about how to use it. Fries had all three and slowly worked his way from one recorded message to the next, until he was directed to press number 1-3-3 for opening hours and locations.

“It was really very funny,” Fries said, quoting a two-year-old tape. “It tells you when post offices will reopen after the Northridge earthquake and where to go to pick up mail if your house was destroyed.”

Correspondent Kate Folmar contributed to this story.