The Mayor's Mail�

2005-05-30

I have, to my own surprise, been enjoying my work at city hall. The work itself isn�t different from the work I�ve done in the past; I�m cleaning out files and doing data entry yet again. The people I work with don�t treat me like an idiot, just because I�m doing idiot work.

Almost as soon as I began working I started thinking of the not so pleasant things associated with working for people in public office. First on the list was the fact that I open the mail for the mayor and city council. That made me somewhat uncomfortable. Visions of letter bombs danced through my head. I�m very fond of my face and fingers. Hard to draw without them.

This was brought home by a mail delivery this week. As I said, I open the mail for the mayor and city council. On Tuesday we received a padded envelope, taped, stapled and hand addressed to the mayor. When I opened it, I noticed a bad smell. I didn�t really think that much of it; my sense of smell is pretty sensitive anyway.

My co-worker and I were discussing the mail and I told her about the package. I made the mistake of smelling it again. Ack! As my co-worker is one of the assistants to the council I passed the package over to her, at arms length.

She pulled out the contents of the package, not, thankfully, with her fingers. It turned out that some resident was complaining of cockroaches in the sewer and in the home of their aged mother.

So they decided that sending a package of dead cockroaches to the mayor�s office was a good way of bringing the problem to the attention of the mayor.

Turns out it�s a better way of bringing yourself to the attention of the police. The mayor of a city of any size probably sees less than a 10th of his mail. If it�s a city run decently, problems are looked into. But the people that bring the problem to the attention of the appropriate officials are administrative assistants, secretaries or receptionists. Not, I repeat, not elected officials. Just some poor working person. Like me.

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