Fifteen Minutes of Terror

I had been busy casing my flats while at the same time half listening to what was going on around me. Above the background noise, some of the city carriers, at the roll of cases (City routes 15 through 20) directly behind me, were discussing another city carrier. One said, “Boy, he screwed up on the route. They are going to get him this time.” Another agreed with the first that whomever they were talking about had made some major errors recently. “They are not going to let him run that route again,” said one of the carriers. The conversation continued about the unnamed carrier while I finished casing my flats and started on my letters. The next thing I could hear was a city carrier saying, “Well, it looks like they are going to take him off that route.” I assumed the supervisor was going over to the case where the carrier in question was to tell him to move to another route. Later I learned that the carrier was a Part Time Flexible (PTF) city carrier. PTF carriers may deliver several different routes and such a move would not be unusual. Around 7:03 AM, shortly after the conversations between the city carriers ended, I heard what sounded like small firecrackers exploding. Such noise was not that unusual. During my short time at the post office I had heard plastic letter trays slammed down on the floor as a prank. I was not concerned, but I was a bit annoyed. I turned and walked a few steps south down the aisle between the rows of cases to see what was happening. One of the mail clerks, Sheryl Sherrill (no kin to Pat Sherrill), was standing at the end of the roll of cases looking toward the middle of the work area, a look of shock on her face. I heard another “firecracker” pop. Between the open legs of city letter case eighteen I saw a uniformed City Carrier, Steve Vick, fall to the floor as if someone had knocked his feet out from under him. The fall was hard enough to tell that what was happening was not horse play. I wheeled around and started running north back in the direction I had come from. As I came to the end of the roll of letter cases where Reynolds worked, I didn’t notice if Alva was still at his case or had already left. I turned left toward the front of the building. I noticed the door to the walk in vault on my right was open and gave a quick thought about going in it. “No, don’t go in there.” a voice inside me said. I continued past the vault and down a short hall that led to the postmaster’s office. I hit the solid oak door to the postmaster’s office at full speed and bounced back. Then I really became concerned. I was in a dead end hall with no way out except back towards the trouble that was taking place in the work area. Luck was with me. There was a door that led from the hall out into the customer’s service lobby. It was open. As I entered the lobby I saw employees jumping or climbing over the customer service counter. They headed for the double glass doors on the south side of the lobby and I followed. A turn to the right and few more steps and I would be outside the front doors of the building.