By Marianne Lincoln

It was 6:05 p.m. when I pulled up to the main Spanaway Post Office tonight. The lights were off and the doors were locked tight. Nevermind that the sign inside says the lobby closes at 6:15 p.m. Our Spanaway Post Office closes when the last man leaves, regardless of the time.

Needless to say, I was frothing at the time. I tried hard to get through traffic to get there before they closed. They weren’t supposed to close early, but they did. In fact, I walked around back and spotted the last postman out and asked if they had changed their lobby hours again. All he said was, “It’s 6:15 ma’am, we’re closed.”

He was deaf to my plea that it was 6:05 p.m. when I arrived and they should have been open. Personally, I don’t understand why the Spanaway Post Office cannot have the lobby open for access to our mail 24 hours a day like the South Hill and Graham Post Offices. Oh, but they have a different Postmaster and “That’s the way we have always done business in Spanaway.”

In 2003, I was so fed up with not being able to pick up my mail in the evening when I returned home that I wrote a letter to the Postmaster of that time, Dale Everett. In fact, the Spanaway Community Association Board all signed the letter. It didn’t make a difference in anything. So I wrote a letter to Senator Patty Murray who referred it to Dale Zinzer, the District Manager. That didn’t change anything either. The fact is, our Spanaway Post Office is going to do things the way it does things and it doesn’t matter how mad you get. They are the only Post Office around that discriminates against their local area by closing the lobby access to PO boxes.

SOL Spanaway. Your Post Office closes the lobby at 6:15 p.m… or sooner if they decide to leave a little early.

I’d like to think I’m not the only one who really gets in a lather about this. Perhaps everyone else in Spanaway gets off work early enough to make the evening deadline except me. Comment if you think we drew the short straw.