One of my favorite things about waking up in the morning is knowing I will be delivering Spectrum bills and coupon magazines as a joyful member of the United States Postal Service. I enjoy dropping off mail, delivering mail, and sometimes I even get to gently place a package on a person’s porch. But one thing about my job that I don’t think is a bunch of action-packed fun is my title: Postman. It has two syllables, and both of them are wrong!
Let’s start with syllable one: post. I don’t work with posts in any context! I’m not setting up a fence, I’m not making any content on social media, and I don’t even act posthaste! I’m the last step in a 3-5 business day-long process. While I love doing it, the use of the term “post” is remarkably inaccurate. The other thing I don’t like is the second syllable: man. I’m a woman! Not that I hate men, some of them are probably very fine people, but I don’t want to go around being called a man when I’m not. It’s just disrespectful to call me by the wrong thing.
I don’t even think there’s an absence of other names I could be called. “Courier” has a great ring to it, and if people started calling me that, it would add a jump to the hop, skip that I already take to every single mailbox I come across. I’d also like “Deliverer”, but that sounds a little clunky, doesn’t it? Kind of like how my mail van moves when it’s low on gas. But it doesn’t worry me that much, as long as it isn’t something so inaccurate and off-putting as “postman”.
Written by Zach Levy, Treasurer