Post Office by Charles Bukowski Read Free Book Online Page B

Days
. I never did like that song.”
    “Well, get another job.”
    “I will.”
    “But keep working there until you find another job. We’ve got to prove to them that …”
    “All right. All right!”

8
    I met an old drunk on the street one afternoon. I used to know him from the days with Betty when we made the rounds of the bars. He told me that he was now a postal clerk and that there was nothing to the job.
    It was one of the biggest fattest lies of the century. I’ve been looking for that guy for years but I’m afraid somebody else has gotten to him first.
    So there I was taking the civil service exam again. Only this time I marked the paper “clerk” instead of “carrier.”
    By the time I got the notice to report for the swearing-in ceremonies, Freddy had stopped whistling
Around the World in Eighty Days
, but I was looking forward to that soft job with “Uncle Sam.”
    I told Freddy, “I’ve got a little business to take care of, so I may take an hour or an hour and a half for lunch.”
    “O.K., Hank.”
    Little did I know how long that lunch would be.

9
    There was a gang of us down there. 150 or 200. There were tedious papers to fill out. Then we all stood up and faced the flag. The guy who swore us in was the same guy who had sworn me in before.
    After swearing us in, the guy told us:
    “All right now, you’ve got a good job. Keep your nose clean and you’ve got the security the rest of your life.”
    Security? You could get security in jail. Three squares and no rent to pay, no utilities, no income tax, no child support. No license plate fees. No traffic tickets. No drunk driving raps. No losses at the race track. Free medical attention. Comradeship with those with similar interests. Church. Roundeye. Free burial.
    Nearly 12 years later, out of those 150 or 200, there would only be two of us left. Just like some guys can’t taxi or pimp or hustle dope, most guys, and gals too, can’t be postal clerks. And I don’t blame them. As the years went by, I saw them continue to march in in their squads of 150 or 200 and two, three, four remain out of each group-just enough to replace those who were retiring.

10
    The guide took us all over the building. There were so many of us that they had to break us up into groups. We used the elevator in shifts. We were shown the employees’ cafeteria, the basement, all those dull things.
    God o mighty, I thought, I wish he’d hurry up. My lunch is over two hours late now.
    Then the guide handed us all timecards. He showed us the timeclocks.
    “Now here is how you punch in.”
    He showed us how. Then he said, “Now, you punch in. “
    Twelve and one half hours later we punched out. That was one hell of a swearing-in ceremony.

11
    After nine or ten hours people began getting sleepy and falling into their cases, catching themselves just in time. We were working the zoned mail. If a letter read zone 28 you stuck it to hole no. 28. It was simple.
    One big black guy leaped up and began swinging his arms to keep awake. He staggered about the floor.
    “God damn! I can’t
stand
it!” he said.
    And he was a big powerful brute. Using the same muscles over and over again was quite tiring. I ached all over. And at the end of the aisle stood a supervisor, another Stone, and he had this
look
on his face—they must practice it in front of mirrors, all the supervisors had this
look
on their faces—they looked at you as if you were a hunk of human shit. Yet they had come in through the same door. They had once been clerks or carriers. I couldn’t understand it. They were handpicked screws.
    You had to keep one foot on the floor at all times. One notch up on the restbar. What they called a “restbar” was a little round cushion set up on a stilt. No talking allowed. Two 10 minute breaks in eight hours. They wrote down the time when you left and the time when you came back. If you stayed 12 or 13 minutes, you heard about it.
    But the pay was better than at the art