Holidays have area post offices overloaded

When Robin Phelps walked into the Cape Girardeau post office Tuesday, she prepared herself for a wait.

With an armful of Christmas gifts headed for Kansas City, the 18-year-old Cape Girardeau resident took her place in a line about 10 deep and sighed.

"I guess I'll be here for a while," she said. "Oh, well. These gifts got to get there."

Good thing she didn't try to mail her gifts on Monday -- the last Monday before Christmas, which is typically the busiest mailing day of the year. Still, area post offices said they were seeing hundreds of parcels and hundreds of thousands of letters as people attempted to get their cards and gifts to their recipients in time for Christmas.

"Yeah, we're pretty busy right now," said Dan Strauss, the manager of customer service at the Cape Girardeau post office on Frederick Street. "We're seeing tons of letters and gifts right here at crunch time."

The U.S. Postal Service expected Americans to place more than 900 million pieces of mail in the 37,000 post offices and drop-off locations around the country. About 280 million pieces of that will be cards and letters, an increase of about 230 million in volume over the average mailing day, the postal service said.

Tuesday was busy, Strauss said, but Monday was a madhouse.

"I spent the better part of the day in the lobby getting packages ready," he said.

Strauss emphasized to customers that if they're mailing local -- which he considers all of Southeast Missouri -- they have until Thursday to get to the post office if they want their packages to arrive by using priority mail, which starts at $8.10 for anything that will fit in a shirt-box sized package. After that, customers will have to use express mail, which offers an overnight guarantee, and a cost that starts at about $1.40 for up to half a pound, he said.

While some customers groused about the lines, Strauss said it was still better than last year, when the post office on Frederick Street was being renovated and lines were much longer at its temporary facility on Christine Street.

"Those lines went outside and the weather was much worse last year," he said.

The renovated post office is also better suited to handle mail, he said, with loading docks instead of having to use a lift to get mail up steps.

But it's still been busy this week as the post office has seen more than three times the volume of a normal mailing day, he said. Strauss didn't know exactly how many letters and packages have made their way through the post office here, but he said on Monday the post offices in Southeast Missouri had processed 373,000 pieces, cards and letters on that day alone.

At the Scott City post office, postmaster Rick White said business has been busy, too. They've seen about double the amount of mail they normally see, he said. And 20 to 30 letters have been addressed to Santa Claus.

White said he personally sends back letters from Santa to the children who took time to write. One child sent a 30-page list of Christmas wishes.

"You have to do something with them," White said. "And I thought the kids would get a kick out of a letter from Santa."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137