USPS Evergreen Station, Tacoma: Closes 24-Hour Self-Service Unit

(Depicted are two paintings that were found inside the 24-Hour Self-Service Unit at Tacoma's Evergreen Station, July 2007) But now this...

A vital, essential, useful, absolutely necessary (how many ways can I say it???) time-saving, customer convenience of immense value, an important facility-within-a-facility is a thing of the past.

Postal officials in their infinite wisdom (no, let's make that finite wisdom) have SHUT DOWN the 24-Hour Self-Service Unit at the Evergreen Station.

Way to go, postmaster! NOT!!!

All that is left now is the electronic machine inside the main building by the post office boxes that requires a credit or debit card to make a purchase.

• Real money is out; plastic is the only kind accepted.

• No longer are you able to purchase stamps from a coin-operated vending machine.

• No longer are you able to purchase a book of stamps from a vending machine that accepts paper money.

• No longer are you able to purchase as few as one or two individual postage stamps at a time during any hour of the day or night at the 24-hour Self-Service Unit, because it is no more!

It has ceased to exist.

In its place now is a sheet of paper that lists retailers around town that you can drive to and purchase books of stamps from instead.

Congestion at Evergreen Station, the Regional Mail-Handling Facility on Pine Street between Tacoma Mall and 38th Street (RMF, for short) and what many think of as simply "the big post office" in Tacoma is bad at almost all hours that the facility is open.

• Traffic is heavy.

• Parking is inadequate.

• Count on an almost unbearably long line waiting in the serpentine queue to get to the counter and conduct any business with a postal employee.

• The dread pushes one's endurance and frustration level to the max -- not only the annoyance of the long wait for service, but the aggravation of NOT being able to do all the other things you need to be doing, but instead stymied, trapped like stockyard cattle in the chute or stanchion waiting in the merciless line to reach the counter.

• Top that off with the apparent lack of adequate staffing to handle the volume of traffic inside the Evergreen Station and it only makes it worse.

If you have been there, you know the drill: there might be two or three people working, and then even with the ridiculously long line, maybe a 45-minute wait for your turn to get up to the counter for service, you can almost be assured that one of those two or three workers will announce that he/she is going on break just about the time you get to the counter.

Okay, so that's the day-in, day-out scenario at Evergreen Station during business hours.

The FABULOUS thing about Evergreen Station has for years been the 24-hour Self-Service Unit on the north end of the building where you could buy stamps in any quantity from one to a bookful or multiple books of stamps, receive change, weigh a package, calculate its necessary postage, and a large, bin to deposit packages into once you've taken care of all the necessary details. The clanging of that big metal bin was as reassuring as it is when you place a bank deposit into the night depository and you hear the clanging of the bin after you have dropped your deposit envelope down into it, and then pull the flap open again to make sure your deposit has dropped. There's a bit of reassurance and security in that clang and in the second clang when you recheck it.

That's the way it WAS in the Self-Service Unit at Evergreen Station, too.

Clang!!! And you KNEW that your parcel had been securely deposited inside the facility and would soon be winging its way to its intended recipient.

• The vending machines in the Self-Service Unit accepted paper money and coins of every denomination.
• Interestingly, they also dispensed cash-back in the form of golden Sacagawea dollar coins, which you don't see anywhere else.

Perhaps you'd only have a $20-bill with you and may only have needed a small quantity of stamps, let's say $5 of stamps and you could count on hearing the cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching of 15 of the golden Sacagawea dollars dropping into the change slot.

The 24-hour Self-Service Unit allowed anyone to expeditiously handle many of the same things that would otherwise require waiting in that queue inside to do during regular business hours.

The Self-Service Unit was an oasis.

An oasis!!!

Countless times over the years I have been there at night perhaps to send a payment out in the nick of time before its due date, trying to beat the deadline of the last pickup time or processing business mailings and either been able to help someone else who a) needed a stamp or didn't have the right change, or b) been helped by another patron when I might have needed a stamp or a coin.

People who used the 24-hour Self-Service Unit during the evening or overnight hours always exhibited an attitude of gratitude. Call it pure joy that they could access the facility and still get their items into the mail in time before the last pickup for the day.

Now the Self-Service Unit is no more.

Closing the Self-Service Unit was an ill-thought-out concept and I hope others will join me in raising a hue and cry over the closure of it. This is a 24-hour world we live in today. Never has it been more important or more necessary than it is right now to have that 24-hour facility.