Morgan residents showed their holiday spirit to help postal workers
Dec 30, 2022 02:46PM ● By Alisha Copfer
Postal workers loading their trucks with Amazon packages to be delivered this holiday. Photo by Dale Winterton
MORGAN—As is typical with the holiday season, there has been a recent surge of packages to be delivered in the past few weeks, and several in the community have stepped up to help. On Dec. 11, people noticed that the Morgan Post Office had several pallets of Amazon packages lined up behind their location that needed to be delivered.
Multiple posts were made on Facebook with several inquiries about the situation and when those packages would be delivered. And the majority of responses were overwhelmingly positive. “I received over 400 comments on my post,” said Dale Winterton. “It’s amazing to see the entourage of people helping.”
Winterton services the post office vehicles with chains for their tires during the winter and snapped pictures of the pallets sitting in the back lot. “We just bought a shorter UTA bus, so I contacted the post office to see if they needed to use that for storage,” said Winterton.
Karen Nelson was another one who posted on Facebook. “I have a unique perspective on the postal service because my son is a postal worker,” said Nelson. She explained that from her perspective, she understands that the post office doesn’t always have the manpower they need to get everything out quickly.
“Most of us in the Facebook group seem to understand,” said Nelson. “It’s a hard process to get all of these Amazon packages delivered. And the postal workers don’t have a choice; they are required to get them out.”
“We have the ability to flex our workforce by having employees shift to offices that need additional support as needed to ensure daily deliveries,” said Rod Spurgeon, United States Postal Service Communications Specialist. “In Morgan City’s case, we had a large number of packages presented to the office for delivery this weekend. This is not an unusual occurrence as we normally receive larger package volumes during the holiday season. We were able to shift employees to the city from nearby post offices to deliver all packages on hand.”
Both the Bountiful and the Ogden post offices stepped up to this call. “The post office only has five routes,” said Winterton. “So the 20 plus vehicles and carriers that came up to help made a tremendous difference.”
Winterton and Nelson both stated that the important lesson from this situation is to learn to thank their postal workers. “If you leave your carrier a gift card, you’ll start getting personalized service,” said Winterton. “Give them a little pat on the back, some recognition.”
Two clubs from MMS, the Kindness Krew and FBLA, painted a large sign to thank their postal workers this holiday season. Photo by Karen Nelson
“I had the thought of what if we put up a bunch of signs in support of their efforts,” said Nelson. She then reached out on Facebook and had a teacher from Morgan Middle School reach out to help. “I thought it would be a great thing to get a club or school involved.”
Krachel Fullmer, CCA and Digital Literacy teacher at Morgan Middle School, thought Nelson’s idea was inspired. “I thought our students could be the legs to Karen’s idea,” said Fullmer. Between her and Deborah Schroader, they came up with the idea to have both the MMS Kindness Krew and the FBLA get together and make thank you cards and signs to be presented at the post office.
“Their resources were limited, but the kids walked over to the post office with the painted sign and a bunch of cards for the workers,” said Nelson. The students worked together in the school halls after classes to paint the large sign on butcher paper and wrote out thank you cards.
Fullmer explained that the kids all walked to the post office after school, and all the postal workers came to the counters to receive the cards and see the thank you sign. “I explained to the students the magnitude of their workload so they would understand what they were thanking the workers for,” said Fullmer.
Between the two school clubs and other community members on Facebook, people in Morgan came together to say thank you in the true holiday spirit. “You can tip your postal worker,” said Nelson. “Give them gift cards, leave them treats. A lot of people don’t know they can do this.”
