“Friendship is often an amusement, sometimes an education, at least a reprieve from loneliness, at best a human connection of the highest and grandest kind. Contradiction is implicit in the very nature of modern friendship. F. Scott Fitzgerald said that the sign of an intelligent person is the ability to keep two contradictory ideas in his head at the same time and still function. With friendship, the two contradictory ideas are these: first, friends can be an immense complication, a huge burden, and a royal pain in the arse; and second, without friendship, make no mistake about it, we are all lost.” Epstein, Joseph. Friendship – an Expose. (Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston-New York., 2006, 270 pages, $24.)
A guy whose wife ran off with his Mercedes, his best friend, the family dog, all the money, and all the booze and grass laying around the house has better prospects than the Red Sox.
They are still at “it” at the local Post Office. “It” being a callous attitude toward customers, (AKA: citizens and taxpayers.) Back in June I wrote about this problem (On Improving the Post Office) and yesterday I visited the same place again to mail five flats and see if the service had improved. They were looking good when I walked in, but it all went to hell-in-a-hand-basket quicker than a bodice is ripped from a well-endowed Southern maiden in a romance novel. The line of customers had 12-15 people waiting. Four uniformed clerks were working, and one in street clothes announced a couple of times that if anyone was there to pick up packages or mail to come to end of the counter. She served a couple of people. Then it all broke down. With three people waiting, two clerks closed their stations and commenced to do some kind of paper work important, I assume, to the Postal Service. They did this without checking what the other two clerks might be doing. One was serving a customer with a big carton (it originally held ten reams of office paper) full of large brown envelopes, each one of which had to be individually weighed and a postage sticker printed and posted on it. The other clerk was doing her best to handle all the other customers. Within minutes the waiting line of three customers had swelled to almost 20. When I left the Post Office it was two clerks closed down for paperwork, one continuing to work the box of large brown envelopes and one soldiering on. The person in street clothes had disappeared. Why do they act like this? If they must close down and do that all-fired important paper work, they ought to go in the back room and not stand there ignoring customers. No cell phone usage was noted.
Gregory G. Mullen, a former special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and Deputy Chief of the Virginia Beach (VA) Police Department, has been selected as the new police chief in Charleston, SC, America’s most historic city. Mullen was selected by Mayor Joseph P. Riley after a nation-wide search and consideration of 137 applicants. Riley interviewed Mullen three times before selecting him “as an agent of change” for a city recently gripped by gun violence.
Mullen worked in Virginia Beach for 21 years, starting in 1985 as a beat cop and working his way up to Deputy Chief. His OSI service preceded his long career in Virginia Beach. He retired from the Air Force Reserve in 2002 after 22 years of active and Reserve Service.
