please empty your brain below
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Post Offices moving into food stores seems the trend. Our local post office and associated newsagent closed a couple of years ago and we were left with the nearest being the main one in town (now inside WHS). Its replacement has finally arrived, inside the adjacent Londis, itself just about to become a Budgens. Not visited it yet, guess I will have to dodge all the biscuits as well. And starting with an H it is nowhere near your two.
davews | 02.12.23 - 8:40 a.m. | #
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Post offices in small food stores seems a weird location, but I guess there aren't any WH Smiths or Rymans in those locations.
Mikey C | 02.12.23 - 9:36 a.m. | #
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Our town post office moved into Smiths. The post office counter and the shop till are adjacent, with separate queues. These have become more and more branded over time, so the post office queue features bright red branding everywhere, with numerous notices saying it's the post office queue. There are also shelves of envelopes and sticky tape and general post-related paraphernalia.
The Smiths queue is all blue and branded and includes their usual over-priced confectionery and odd bits and bobs.
Despite this effort, people are absolutely incapable of joining the correct queue. Whenever I have been in there, people of all ages walk up and ask which queue is which, or join one and stand there for ten minutes before realising that they are in the wrong place.
One day the management will realise that having the queues next to each other was in fact a bad idea
Herned | 02.12.23 - 9:44 a.m. | #
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18,393 (1999); 11,547 (2019); 10,250 (2023).
I remember snaking queues forming outside post offices ahead of opening in the 1990's. Back when benefits and state pensions were paid weekly. In cash.
Rod | 02.12.23 - 10:22 a.m. | #
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Our local Post Office disappeared into a convenience store back in the early 80s, the need to use it has been eroded ever more since as more stuff can be done by direct debit or government paying pensions direct into bank accounts.
Although online shopping means Amazon related parcels seem to be a part of the business, although two sets of parcel lockers have opened nearby.
Still Anon | 02.12.23 - 10:58 a.m. | #
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For anyone who hasn't tried it, the royal mail print at home service for postage is very handy, we print our own labels (just need some A6 sticky labels or some selotape) and have a post box near us that takes parcels. but they will also bring you a label and pick up by the postman as well if you ask.
MUCH better than queuing especially at xmas time.
Alistair Twin | 02.12.23 - 11:17 a.m. | #
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Our main branch moved into the WH Smiths a few years ago and all the rest I know of have been in small grocery/convenience stores for at least the last 11 years.
For the buying regular stamps I now find it much easier to ask at the till when I'm in Sainsburys.
Cornish Cockney | 02.12.23 - 11:34 a.m. | #
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Well, fancy that! When I worked in an office 4 floors above the Guardian I sometimes bought my sandwiches in Express Food, little knowing that it would achieve fame as London's last post office.
Peter | 02.12.23 - 11:52 a.m. | #
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You're buying a dozen stamps, in two transactions (ie, six each), yet it's a 'non-standard number of stamps', torn 'from a larger sheet' - I thought books came in sizes of six and twelve?
dg writes: four and eight.
RG | 02.12.23 - 12:51 p.m. | #
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I embarrassed myself this week, visiting Wantage. I asked where the Post Office was and a local told me "you are standing right under the sign"! It was at the back of a SPAR shop and the queue was so long it was beginning to interfere with the grocery shoppers. I suppose if the alternative is a reduction in number, then this sort of thing is just going to have to be lived with.
J. | 02.12.23 - 2:33 p.m. | #
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Useless related trivia - Zeals is also the last location alphabetically on the railway computer system, despite the fact there is no railway line or station there.
The first alphabetically is Aachen.
Westerleigh Junction | 02.12.23 - 2:37 p.m. | #
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I have 3 Post Offices to chose from in the vicinity of my home
The main post office in Southend moved upstairs into WH Smiths a few years ago, so the opening hours are tied to the shop's. On the plus side it is quite separate from the majority of Smiths customers who remain downstairs, so queueing is quite separate.
The village sub-PO is part of a local mini-mart, and finally there is also a small PO at the local Waitrose.
So compared with some places out in the sticks, I consider myself quite well provided for.
IanD | 02.12.23 - 3:45 p.m. | #
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When did post offices started morphing into regular businesses in the UK? Surprised me when I was first arriving as it's absolutely not the case in France nor Hong Kong where post offices are very much still premises of their own.
Do they rent part of the shop in a sense? Or do they simply pay the shop in exchange for them offering postal services?
dg writes: 2013
matthieu1221 | 02.12.23 - 4:05 p.m. | #
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I found a proper dedicated Post Office in Merthyr Tydfil when I was there last month. And a very good one it was too! How they managed to keep it, when all around are faltering, I have no idea.
cau1khead | 02.12.23 - 4:38 p.m. | #
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The imposing Central Post Office was part of the essential social furniture of any major town or city. The smell of the Lino, the whiff of the ink, the thump of the official stamps. Spacious and imposing. Even in the few remaining dedicated Post Offices one now trips over stalls of greeting cards and pointless gimcrack commemorative stamps and coins. Part of the remorseless crappification of our public fabric.
Sorry for the jumpers-for-goalposts vibe. But to see a major post office - Blackpool leaps to mind - replaced by a counter in some Budgens-a-like is most depressing.
David B | 02.12.23 - 4:42 p.m. | #
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I hope Alistair gets a discount for printing stamps at home. I mean ink and stickers aren't free.
ap | 02.12.23 - 8:07 p.m. | #
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Our local PO used to be in the corner of a corner shop, surrounded by grumpy signs about where to queue and not reading the magazines without buying first, but it didn't survive the change of ownership. The nearest is now at the back of the pharmacy, in a shop unit that feels too small for either function, never mind both.
The need for the services of a Post Office feels like it's been whittled away over the last decade or so, but the treatment of subpostmasters by the PO can't have helped their numbers. Take a look at the current public eenquiry into the Horizon scandal for some shocking examples - who'd want to work for a company like that?
martin | 03.12.23 - 7:57 a.m. | #
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On the other hand, with the closure of bank branches, Post Offices are becoming more useful if you need to deal with paying in cheques or cash.
Mushroomcounter | 03.12.23 - 9:33 a.m. | #
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matthieu - a Post Office is usually run by the person who owns the shop its within, and they are paid money to do it. Apart from the larger central post offices (many of which have now gone), suburban post offices have been like this for decades. The main difference being that whereas the post office used to be the main business, usually with cards, stationery and newspapers alongside, it's now secondary to a small supermarket.
Anders | 05.12.23 - 12:34 p.m. | #
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