Yesterday was an extremely bad day capping off an extremely bad month if you're a New York City letter carrier. They've been told by the President they are getting a multi-year pay freeze right before the most demanding season of the year. The Washington Post attacked postal unions as the prime culprit in the USPS's loss of $8.5 billion for FY 2010. Even some Democrats are joining in the bashing by proposing cuts in pension benefits. And after a Saturday off, they returned to work having to deliver the mail in middle of a colossal fuck-up on the part of Mayor Bloomberg in failing to do some basic mayoring.
My postman, a middle-aged Chinese man of a rather gentle disposition, calmly and efficiently delivered the mail. I rarely get to see him, but I'm on vacation this week. In New York, postman walk the streets with a satchel cart like the one pictured here. Imagine walking the streets of Brooklyn with several feet of snow on the ground with this thing loaded down with a 20 or 30 pounds of mail. Navigating around impassable snow-banks, crossing streets that still haven't been cleared, and all the while avoiding mounds of dog shit left by irresponsible dog owners. But, he did his job. I was out shoveling the sidewalk in front of my house when he came along. I asked him how is it going, but it was clear he was in no mood for conversation today. He just wanted to get the work done, understandably. An offer of coffee was declined, respectfully. I thanked him for the bill from Bank of America, which sort of offered an interesting moment of irony: the downtrodden federal employee going about the thankless task of doing the bidding of a recently publicly bailed out banking colossus which probably paid 10 cents for the service. Yet the postman is the guy who is getting over like a bandit, according to the politicians.
Mayor Bloomberg's job is to make sure this guy doesn't have to complete an obstacle course to do his job. Simply put, the mayor fucked up the basic job of Mayoring. I ran into a sanitation captain buying cigarettes last night at the deli. I asked him, in so many words, "what the fuck???!!!" He told me it was out of his hands. They mayor had cut the number of plow trucks available to Brooklyn, so we had to wait for the City to get plowed clear. Which sort of jibes with the Mayor's statement about the matter, which pissed off a lot of us who live in the boroughs:
"The world has not come to an end. The city is going fine, Broadway shows were full last night. There are lots of tourists here enjoying themselves. Two people told me they went to the theater last night and afterwards tried to get into a restaurant and there was a waiting list. I think the message is, 'The city goes on.'"
The tourists are enjoying themselves?!! Are you shitting me? Fuck them! People who live, work and pay taxes to The City of New York are flummoxed. He plowed the streets for the goddamn tourists and the rich parts of Manhattan, but for people in the boroughs hours are being lost on the job because subways and buses are down. People can't get their cars out their parking places because Bloomberg hasn't plowed the streets. Parents can't get children in strollers anywhere because the streets are blocked with four foot tall snowbanks. Subways and buses are down. I saw people walking to the G train in the street! This is Mayoring 101: trains run, streets are clear. Everybody understand their is a snow storm and that causes, but the Mayor seriously fucked this one up. Telling New Yorkers he's going to tow their cars doesn't help, nor doesn't make sense. How is he going to get the tow trucks into the street? This shit is simple. We had days to prepare for this storm. Tow before the storm hits and warn people not to park on the mainways. Then, plow and salt the mainways all day, all night, all the time. THEN, hit the side streets once the storm stops and get your enforcers out there to get business and homeowners to do their part. Telling New Yorkers that the tourists are having a fucking ball isn't what you do after a fuckup.
I might be pissed, but at least my mailman was going about his work delivering corporate America's bills to the middle class. He wasn't happy, but he was doing his job. Be nice if the Mayor got on the fucking ball and did his.
My city councilwoman is pretty livid too: