The letter that wasn't posted

I don’t normally start entries here like I am writing a novel. Sometimes in the details you capture the essence of a transformation that has such huge ramifications for society that it truly leaves you stunned. I sometimes joke about the last war being all about ketchup and our ability to enjoy our tomatoes in liquid form through a plastic bottle and this is not far from the truth.

Ketchup, to make and market properly, requires such an extensive network of supply-chain economics, free-market-economy principles and a truly consumer-orientated society (you couldn’t get it in Communist China before it opened up its economy) that in a “seeing the world in a grain of sand” approach, this is exactly what the last war was about.

We take the sending of a letter for granted. The number of times the Royal Mail has been fined for failing to meet its targets of 98% next day delivery for First Class post have been something we get used to. We expect post to work. We send a letter and it gets there. In the postal service we have created a low-cost, incredibly effective, efficient network that seems to span the globe. A letter addressed to the US gets there in seven days. A package to South Africa just reaches its intended recipient. Because it works so well we don’t really see the mechanics of it. We do not see the manpower, the organization, the thinking and planning, the supervisory machinery, all the things that go into setting up and then controlling a quality service.

We do not see the invisible stuff either. We do not see, for example the pride that goes into doing a job well or the responsibility that even the loweliest of us feel, or even the system of accountability that makes it difficult to not do your job.

All I wanted to do was post a letter. It was in an envelope and written on paper using ink. This is low-tech stuff, we’ve perfected it since the days of the Pony Express. The Post Office was just 15 minutes away from my flat on foot and I walked down to where I thought it would take a few minutes to buy the right stamp and send a letter from St Petersburg to London.

Ok, there are a few surprises in store now. The first one was the building (bearing in mind that Post is a government service). It was low, of the pro-cat variety that vanished with the asbestos scares in the 70s, with some pebble-dash exterior, low ceilings, bad lighting, dirty walls, cracked melamine floors and the sort of place you’d call a dive had there been food or drink or music on offer.

A couple of huge notice boards choker-filled with notices announced proudly that this was ‘Information’.

There was a counter with a low divider and the places for two Post Office Assistants, though one was shut with a typed notice giving opening times. It was just after 12.00 and the second, apparently would not be open until 12:15.

I joined the queue in the one which was manned and seeing how I was about eighth in line I thought it would not be too long. A couple of enterprising souls came in, looked at my queue and gamely joined one other person waiting patiently in front of the shut place which should open in 15 minutes.

I suppose I should have worried here and then because they had decided to join a queue without an assistant which would open in 15 minutes rather than join mine, but hey, I was sinking in a state of depression brought about by the setting which I was now busy inventorying, so I did not think much about them.

I took stock of the setting behind the counter. The person serving was at a low table dominated by a massive telephone and she was busy checking something on a parcel that was being sent by the first person in the queue. She was in her late 50s dressed in a uniform which would have marked as janitorial staff anywhere else and yelling something which sounded like numbers into the handset.

There was a door, left open, behind her which presumably linked the service end of the Post Office to the admin staff. I say presumably because it was opened to a low-ceilinged corridor with walls that had not been painted or cleaned for at least 50 years. There were low-wattage incandescent light-bulbs adding to the horror-set image and a half-open door along the corridor wall leading, presumably to an office.

At the end of the corridor there was faint, natural daylight. There was no sign of life in the corridor behind her so I set about studying the layout behind the counter. She was still reading some laborious code on the telephone and the queue had not moved. It was now 12:08 so it’s not like I had no time.

Obviously ergonomics and basic furniture are not big in the Russian Postal Service. The area behind the counter was split in two by two large, sturdy wooden tables (complete with faded wooden surface and splinters). The larger of the two was covered with papers, the parcel that was being prepared plus a massive phone. The second one, of a lower hate by a good three inches, had a PC (switched off) and some more scattered papers.

Behind that, about seven feet away were two grey, battered, six foot high metal filing cabinets with a row of sorry looking potted plants on top which looked like they had not seen the light of day (which is about right as the nearest daylight window was at the far end and covered with notices) for years. The plants were dirty, the plant pots were dirty and the filing cabinets were dirty. What’s more they were open and inside was a filing nightmare with folders left willy-nilly everywhere.

By the time I had finished examining all this I was beginning to feel like an extra in a gulag prisoner movie and the queue had still not moved. The other queue, the one forming in expectation of the coming Post Assistant was now four strong.

It was, by the wall clock 12:13 and the parcel was almost finished upon which point the sole Post Assistant serving announced she would be taking a break in two minutes for 15 minutes but as a post track had arrived with letters and parcels to be sorted and she was on her own she was going to be busy. We all had to come back ‘later’.

I know it sounds incredible. Particularly as I walked back home feeling depressed, rang up DHL and had the letter on its way within an hour after paying about £40 for the service. The thing is it never used to be like that (apparently). In the old Soviet system a Post Man was a coveted position to be served with pride.

Post was regular, the Postman was greeted as the harbinger of happy news and the carrier of people’s thoughts and being one elevated you socially. Now it takes seven days for a letter to be delivered across St Petersburg. Russian companies uses couriers and the Post Assistant that ‘served’ us gets paid about £3 a day doing a job no one wants from a position of power because if she leaves it she’s hard to replace!

I suppose I should finish with a moral which should be along the lines of ‘don’t use paper if you can go digital’ but I will eschew my normal cynicism and think about how change, while good, when it happens without control or too fast also destroys things which are good and neglects to replace them.

Post services are part of a country’ national identity and its sense of pride. Here, they are a source of dismay, irritation and an affirmation that Russia is still second-best in the world.