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Hello Ardith Hinton.,

 -=> Quoting Ardith Hinton to Peter Coggon <=-

 AH> Hi, Peter!  Your name seems familiar... have you posted in SURVIVOR
 AH> or ABLED before?  Welcome (back), anyway.  :-)

  Your name is familiar, and yes...we exchanged comments in the
translation conference ..or whatever it was.

 AH> Uh... you worked for the Post Office?  My father did too. 
 AH> It seemed to me, even as a kid, that he had a very high-stress job.

   If more stress, if you happen, as I did to stand-up and inform
them as an employee, that they were violating my rights.  Not only
are unionized employees denied the right to sue directly in court
but they must go through a less then fair union, through
unionized officials bought by management, and then to get the
union to deny is impossible to move the complaint into the
courts.

Did it once at the start as mentioned, and met the Ministry
responsible for the Post Office back then, and he put them right.

Big story  Ardith ... lots of people hurt.

 AH> I don't know much about what goes on there nowadays, but I
 AH> do recall watching how he studied for case exams.  Before the days of
 AH> postal codes there was a manual... probably a couple of hundred pages
 AH> in tiny print... which he'd have to memorize.  Mail for Bowen Island
 AH> goes via West Vancouver, for example. That's a no-brainer if you live
 AH> around here & you've actually travelled on the ferry from Horseshoe Bay
 AH> to Bowen Island.  Now add a bunch of other places all over the world
 AH> which you've never been to... consider that the routing changes from
 AH> time to time, and the only practical way to revise the manual is to
 AH> cut & paste strips of paper from the update memos... then be prepared
 AH> to sort ninety letters a minute if you expect to keep your job.  I
 AH> couldn't have done it. 
 
It sounds like your dad was there ,long before me.  90 letters a minute
is a bit much.   The repitition would have one off work.

I started in September 1975...actually and only got my revised seniority
when it nearly came to a day in court.   Opening court costs are 2000
so they know what comes after that...my addons.

I went into letter carriers , in Toronto, and I am so happy to say I
met some really great and famed people, and those who had a family
past of fame.   It was worth it...not the silly little idiots that
used their position to play with people.
 
 PC>  I had a choice to work elesewhere, but for sick parents
 PC>  and needing my help....
   >
 AH> Sandwich Generation?  That's how some folks refer to those
 AH> of us who have dependent offspring living at home as well as aged
 AH> parents who need a lot of our time & attention.  Been there, done
 AH> that... [wry grin]. 
 
I am happy I did it.   I would have felt worse now if I had not.
 
 PC>  not until I was injured and had cancer and major
 PC>  operations did I ever enter in the nightmare they
 PC>  put me through.....and I survived...a SURVIVOR
 PC>  like you say....against big odds
   >
 AH> Good for you!  I'm very interested in how & why some folks
 AH> manage to survive, despite the odds, while others don't.  For several
 AH> weeks I lived in a pediatric oncology ward with our daughter.  After I
 AH> had studied everything you never wanted to know about leukemia, which I
 AH> had to do in order to get us both out of there, I turned to my library
 AH> book... i.e. LOVE, MEDICINE & MIRACLES by Bernie Siegel.  Others
 AH> thought I was I was crazy.  But when I read this book I thought to
 AH> myself "Wow... that's *exactly* what I've been doing!"
and resolved to
 AH> do more of it.  Nora is still alive & well, BTW, almost twenty years
 AH> later. 

What you say is true.   There are Doctors like that too!   Always keep
reading and ask questions.  Get their minds going...school is out they
can not or don't need to memorize it now....they have to know what
they are doing ....and by your book you found out it seems what I
see of Doctors here.   Great memorys for passing exams, but useless.

 AH> Now... what about you?  Seems to me you speak your mind &
 AH> you're not afraid to tackle bureaucracy over something you perceive as
 AH> unfair.  From what I've seen, these are healthy characteristics.  Any
 AH> other suggestions...??  :-) 
 
That seems fair.   I might add, I have asked never for anything that 
everyone else did not share.   I expect fair treatment, a pipe dream
as I see in the real world.  ODDS...well they mean nothing if one beleives
they are in the right.

No other suggestions.  Well not right now ...and then too any
suggestion would have to follow a situation to comment on.
Not right all the time.

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