THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 4, 1995 TAG: 9501040413
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Anyone calling the station manager at Chesapeake's main post office on Tuesday afternoon had to dial again.
He was out in the parking lot, directing traffic.
``We have three people in the parking lot directing traffic, and Battlefield Boulevard is a mess,'' said Ica Carey, a postal clerk at the branch.
``It's always like this when the rates go up,'' Carey said. ``When things change like that, I think people panic.''
Carey and her harried colleagues in post offices all over Hampton Roads were inundated with customers Tuesday. A rate increase beginning at 12:01 a.m. on New Year's Day raised first-class postage from 29 to 32 cents. The price to mail a postcard rose a penny, to 20 cents.
Preoccupied during Christmas and New Year's - and lulled by a three-day holiday that ended Monday - people were suddenly desperate to get bills in the mail and precisely the right postage on each letter - not a penny more, not a penny less.
At a makeshift booth in the lobby of the Chesapeake post office, postal clerk Jack Salvato was selling sheets of 3-cent stamps.
``I've been out here for about an hour and I've sold about 4,000 stamps,'' he said.
Carey said most people were coming in for 3-cent stamps. ``They wouldn't think of putting two 29-cent stamps on a letter,'' she said.
Certainly not Janet Ragan of Virginia Beach.
``What is it today?'' Ragan asked as she marched around the outdoor self-service postal station in the Pembroke Mall parking lot in Virginia Beach.
Ragan fingered a handful of coins and studied the instructions on the stamp machines. She and her husband, Harvey, had driven first to the Lynnhaven station on Viking Drive, then to the Witchduck station, in search of stamps. Snaking lines of waiting cars discouraged them at both places. They ended up at Pembroke looking for 1-cent stamps.
Although 1-cent stamps aren't sold singly there, you can buy three along with a 32-cent stamp.
No sale. Ragan pocketed her money and strode back to her car.
``They don't have any,'' she called to her husband.
Customer relations coordinators for the U.S. Postal Service kept a close eye on the Tuesday stamp rush. Despite public fears that post offices would run out of 1-cent stamps or even the new G, or 32-cent, stamp, Hervey Trimyer, customer relations coordinator for Norfolk and Chesapeake, said the bigger problem was parking. Fran Sansone, his counterpart in Virginia Beach, agreed.
``We get them in and out of here quickly,'' Sansone said, watching a line of 30 people lurch past her office inside the Lynnhaven station. The parking lot was another story. Cars were backed onto Viking Drive and in both directions behind the stoplights on Lynnhaven Parkway.
``This,'' said Oscar Davis, gripping the steering wheel of his red Toyota sedan in front of the post office, ``is the pits.'' He was 12th in line to get a parking space. Then he could go inside and wait in another line for stamps. MEMO: Staff writer Patricia Huang contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: CHARLIE MEADS/Staff color photos
Post office patrons line up Tuesday to be served at the Virginia
Beach main post office located at Viking Drive and Lynnhaven
Parkway
D.J. Neeley waits Tuesday to mail late Christmas packages at the
Virginia Beach main post office.
by CNB