Going Postal: Kensington Post Office Redux

Perhaps you saw the post about the YouTube vid of the man going insane at the Kensington Post Office. It either speaks to the gentleman's tenuous grip on reality and need for anger management or gets at what some post offices can do to people. Chris Curen, who sent the following dispatch from the front lines, reported of the Kensington Post Office, with we he must deal quite regularly, in the email that came with this story that "The employees in there are insanely abusive and unresponsive, especially to people with poor English, which is about 3/4 of the neighborhood. I've actually had supervisors refuse to tell me their names in there."

Is it "The Worst Post Office in America"? His report on the recent community meeting held about the wretched state of affairs at the post office is as follows:

At a community meeting in the packed Immaculate Heart of Mary auditorium last Thursday night, Kensington resident Ethan Rosenblatt stepped out of an angry crowd and asked a reasonable question.

“Why is it so hard to contact a supervisor at the Kensington Post Office?” Rosenblatt asked. “You can’t find a phone number. You can’t find an email address. You can’t even find out where to send a letter of complain.”

In front of him, Brooklyn Postmaster Joseph Chiossone and newly appointed Kensington Station Manager Raymond Schweikle stared into their notes. Finally, the meeting’s organizer and moderator, Assemblyman Jim Brennan, addressed Rosenblatt’s question.

“I used to list those numbers in my monthly newsletter,” Brennan said. “But the post office kept changing the numbers as soon as I listed them.”

A chorus of boos ensued, until finally Postmaster Chiossone promised that supervisor’s phone numbers would be displayed in the Kensington Station within a week.

Such was the mood Thursday, as Kensington residents swapped war stories about what one person called “The Worst Post Office in America.”

Complaints from the feisty crowd of over 200 – many of them senior citizens – included allegations of identity theft by postal employees, and descriptions of lines running out of the Kensington Station and onto MacDonald Avenue. Many recounted instances of rudeness on the part of employees, others described missing packages, two month delivery delays, and chronic understaffing.

“I’m from Vietnam,” one speaker told the assemblage, “And I can tell you that the post office in Saigon works better than this one.”

For his part, Postmaster Chiossone sounded like a man who had taken the first step towards recovery by admitting there was a problem.

“We can’t do anything about the past except admit to our mistakes” he told the crowd repeatedly. “We can only try to move forward.” Chiossone cited new policies that would help mitigate service problems in Kensington, including increased lobby monitoring, retraining staff members, longer service hours, and a “zero tolerance policy” for staff rudeness. But he was careful not to promise too much, noting that there were three post offices in Park Slope’s 11215 zip code, while Kensington’s 11218 code, with a larger population, was served only by the MacDonald Avenue office - a condition over which, Chiossone said, he had no control.

And as of Wednesday, the walls of the Kensington Post Office were still unblemished by supervisor’s phone numbers.
--Chris Curen

So, is the Kensingston Station the Stephen King Novel of Post Offices? Or is it just a somewhat more extreme version of the average depressing Brooklyn postal adventure?

[Photo of boxes stacked at the Kensington Station courtesy of Chris Curen]

Related Post:
Crazed at the Kensington Post Office