Soft news feature: Where did post office clocks go?

Where did post office clocks go?
March 08 2007

James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer

A clock on the left-hand side of the customer service counter greets patrons of the Washington Street post office in Naperville. Below it, a calendar of zebras tracks the date.

A cynic might say that setup allows customers to count down both the minutes and the days elapsing as they wait in line.

Some postal customers no longer get a chance to count the ticks as they get ticked off. Clocks are vanishing from post offices across the country.

The clock near Mary Becker at the always-busy downtown Elgin post office vanished at least six months ago, she said. Managers never explained to her or the other employees what happened to the clocks. So workers there developed their own theory.

"They have those secret shoppers come in sometimes," Becker said. "They don't want them to be able to see if it takes too long for someone to wait on them."

That may also be the working theory about why some post offices in Wheaton, Elgin, Naperville, Addison, Algonquin, Gilberts, West Chicago and Des Plaines, to name a few, no longer have clocks.

But that theory just isn't true, says Jim Mruk, U.S. Postal Service spokesman for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin.

"There's no widespread effort to remove clocks from retail areas," Mruk said - unless you count what happened at the turn of the new century.

A stamp promotion in some post office lobbies involved clocks counting down the hours to the new millennium, Mruk said. The clocks were supposed to expire at the crack of 2000.

"They kind of took on a life of their own," Mruk said. "People figured out you could reprogram them to count down to other things. So a message went out that it's kind of time to bring all these clocks in."

Wall clocks soon followed.

Mruk said post offices were encouraged in the same message to create "clutter-free, professional retail environments."

"Is it better to let people see the menu boards so they can make an informed choice?" Mruk said. "That was kind of a no-brainer. In some cases, when they took the clock down it really didn't make any sense to put it anywhere else."

At the post office in Wheaton, a back-lit, blue and white menu board now advertises services ranging from stamps to packaging tape - just like a McDonald's menu. And at 2:45 p.m. Wednesday there was no wait for customers. And no clock for them to realize it.