The phone rang yesterday afternoon.
'Hello.'
'I am from Amazon. I have a parcel for you.'
'Okay.' (I have to admit that because the speaker had a foreign accent I was a little dubious and waiting for him to tell me I would have to give him my log-on details in some scam or other.)
'I am at your gate. There is a dog in the garden.'
According to the poster in the Post Office collection depot seven postmen and women are bitten every minute? Hour? Day? (Just checked the latest figures from Royal Mail; it's actually 44 a week, which roughly equates to seven a day.) So I suppose his caution was warranted. Indeed Royal Mail has a strict etiquette by which postmen are supposed to abide that includes not petting a dog. It almost definitely must include not shutting a runaway dog in someone else's garden while you jump back in your post van to rush back to our house to tell me George has escaped but, 'Come on, get in the van and I'll take you to him.'
I am glad some postmen are human first and jobsworth last.
P.S. I do appreciate that not all dogs are as soft as George and that postmen do take risks on a daily basis. I place great value on our postal service. Just in case I'm giving a different impression.
3 comments:
Youngest daughter delivered the evening paper when she was at high school. Her father went with her to discourage a couple of enormous, untrained dogs.
Our elder daughter had trouble walking to school in 3rd grade (suburb of Seattle) because a chou lived on the route and scared the Dickens out of her. The neighbor on one side of my current abode has three dogs; the neighbor on the other side has two. I spend a considerable share of my time working in the yard or in the woods and I can't step outside our house without at least one dog barking at me incessantly until I finish up and go back inside. I don't dislike dogs, in fact, there are a few that I actually like; but, I feel the same way about dogs as I do about humans: There are too darned many!
I got a giggle out of your "postmen". I think it was the mid-1970s in which we went from such gender specific titles to "postal workers" and "mail carriers". Thanks for the memories.
Cop Car
Barking dogs are a pain, CopCar. I feel bad if George barks for too long, not that he does. He's too lazy.
Post a Comment