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I made my probable final trip ever to the Shepherd’s Bush Green Post Office. This has place has been a source of frustration, blogs and Metro columns over the years, but bizarrely through all my complaints and jokes about waiting times, I have made friends with the staff and the manager and have been impressed with how their hard work and patience has turned things round for the branch. It was nothing to do with me, of course, but I like to pretend to take credit and claim this as the one truly notable achievement of my 14 years of living in this borough. I have idly suggested that a huge statue of me on Shepherd’s Bush Green would be an appropriate mark of gratitude. I am assuming the locals are waiting for the day I go to put it up. Certainly I heard my neighbours whispering about a big celebration when that finally happens. So I will pretend to be surprised.
But because we’re living in Tony Blairs’ Britain, the success of the Post Office team has been stuffed back in their face like a big parcel containing a custard pie. The Post Office is being moved to WH Smiths in the Westfield and the building presumably sold off. It’s much less convenient for the people of the area and a very disappointing development (and what happens to all these WH Smiths Post Offices if WH Smiths goes the way of Woolworths? - it does feel like a somewhat old fashioned franchise).
So my one great Bush success (yes I did that on purpose) lies in ruins and the people designing and building my Ozymandius sized statue are probably feeling a bit stupid (perhaps Ozymandius had the same problem and that’s why the statue only had his feet in it, cos they didn’t bother to finish the rest).
The Post Office was packed again today, like the bad old days, and who can blame the staff for not wanting to keep things running efficiently when all their dedication has been so cruelly rewarded? It is an odd coincidence that my residence here and theirs ends at almost the same time.
I posted off my eBay packages and sent this month’s monthly badge winner prizes off to America (because that’s where the winner lives, I am not insane), using the machines that at the moment still require a staff member to hover around and assist the customers, but will soon surely see the end of their jobs all together. I’d been amazed at the airport on Saturday to discover the check in for the flight was now totally automated, including checking in baggage. We are being replaced by robots and most of those robots are so unsexy that only a real pervert could want to have sex with them.
Hopefully for now all the brilliant staff have jobs in the WH Smiths post office. Until at least the machines make them redundant.
I left the store without emotion and without registering that I wouldn’t be going back. Where will the crazy people of the Bush congregate now? Ian WH Smith is going to rue the day he invited them all into the back of his store. As well as the day he decided to sell books, papers and stationery, which will one day be as redundant as the humans he once used to sell them. Once they’ve automated the customers too, then we can all relax.
