Jun 22, 2010

A blog moment indeed...

The Greek Postal Service is one of the last remaining Greek public services that hasn't been turned over to privatization. The heads of ELTA - Hellenic Postal Services are refusing to renew temp employee contracts or hire new postal workers in the name of "minimizing" their budget and apparently not caring if the tax-paying people get their mail on time or not.

The photo is from my town's mail distribution center where incoming post is sorted according to postal codes, streets and numbers. The man (see elbow and athletic pants on the left) is our mailman, who broke his leg (see his crutches in the middle of the photo). Because of the lay offs, Takis' broken leg and yet another postman's serious illness the mail in our town wasn't being distributed. Bills were arriving extremely late, utilities were cut off because of expiring bills, banks were sending warning letters of delayed payments and so forth.

Anyone who wanted to get their mail had to go to the central mail distribution center and search for it by themselves. The young lady on the right is my eldest daughter, who is not a postal worker. She came to help me search for our mail,our next-door as well as across-the-street neighbours' mail. The distribution center was packed with other townfolk doing the same. It was insane. My daughter gave me the idea when she rolled her eyes and shook her head, "THIS is a blog moment!".



A blog moment indeed..., originally uploaded by flubberwinkle.