going postal

just for fun, we decided to schedule a tour of our local post office for our girl scouts on saturday morning.  seemed like it might be something interesting, and who doesn't love a field trip?

because the person who usually does the tours was off that day, the office manager got to do the honors.  i was slightly annoyed as she kept dropping little grumbly comments like "i know this probably isn't very interesting, but..." and "this is really exciting, i know."  i mean, come ON.  at least try to front like you give a shit about this in front of the kids.  ugh.

when we stepped through the door marked "employees only," the first thing we got to see was where the letters go when you drop them through the little chute from the other side.

the bean was interested to see where all those packages we drop off go.

all of those packages are then sorted out based on their urgency - first class/media mail, priority, express overnight.

and then they learned what a p.o. box is.

we got to see where the mail carriers stand around every morning and sort all of the incoming mail into big bins for the various routes - 40-something different ones from this post office.

then each carrier takes their bin to their station, where they then work on sorting that mail by address.  having started out as a carrier herself, the manager told us that they get to know every house by the owners' last names.

also - don't ever let your dog out while they get the mail.

anything with a bar code gets scanned with this contraption, which the girls seemed to find particularly fascinating.

outside, the girls got to see the loading dock where all the mail is delivered and then picked up for distribution to the processing centers.  then they got a close-up look at a typical mail truck.

it was fun to be on the other side of the counter for a change.

with the tour finally over, each scout received a cool coloring book and then their parents were there to pick them up.  as the bean and i hopped into the car and got ready to head off to our next activity, we noticed something out the back window:

i don't suppose watching someone get arrested counts towards the petal for learning to "respect authority," does it?  oh well.