There is a lot I don’t understand about the closure of the Dillon Post Office a few days prior to Christmas/Hanukkah and its sudden reopening the day after at about noon time. That is the point. Did I miss something or was there some attempt to communicate with the public about the whys and wherefores other than the lame sign on the front door which gave no real information other than that the Post Office was sorry for the inconvenience and hoped to reopen sometime in the future? How frustrating not to have more information! How incredibly insensitive it seemed to keep everything locked up and the Dillon public locked out at this time of year.

If the post office was under some sort of threat, if the attempted break-in was the cause of the closure, why not ask the powers-that-be to station a few National Guard troops or armed federal employees in the facility so that people could get their meds, their holiday mail and their packages? Surely there was some better solution to this holiday debacle than to shut the public out and not provide a better understanding of the reasons and a more definitive statement of the plan to reopen.

A letter to the Summit Daily News would have shown us Dillon postal users some measure of courtesy and enlightenment. But the lack of information about this vital service is the precise reason why people have turned to electronic communications instead of using an outdated, unresponsive and inefficient operation that the Postal Service has become. There is a reason why it is called “snail mail,” and this lockout just replaced that pejorative term to “no mail.”  

However, I sincerely do wish happy holidays to all Dillon postal workers. I don’t envy our collective situation.