CHARING CROSS POST OFFICE
Charing Cross, London WC2
Year: 1932
Selected bibliographical references
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 3 Feb 1932, p. 8
History
Opened: Feb 1932
Selected bibliographical references
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 3 Feb 1932, p. 8
History
Opened: Feb 1932
Building description
From: Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 3 Feb 1932, p. 8
The new Post Office opened this week at Charing Cross is being greeted by the London Press and public with chorus not only of praise, but of positive amazement. What there so startling about the place, which concerned just as usual with ordinary postal routine. Let us try to find out by noting in order the chief features which are drawing so much astonished applause. The new Post Office is spacious, airy and pleasantly lit, with a marble floor and fittings of glass and polished wood The desks for writing telegrams give you plenty of elbow room, and are supplied with pens that write and ink that flows. Close by are large metal waste paper baskets of agreeable modern design. The main desk is on the same ample scale, and there is enough space under the grille for you to receive stamps without bruising your knuckles. A clock on each wall tells you Greenwich time, and in the basement there are 15 telephone booths ventilated by a big central fan. Finally, the staff—all men —are said to be smartly dressed and charmingly courteous. They will answer even foolish questions with a smile, and if you are out of coppers for telephoning they will change pound note as though they enjoyed it. All this is very satisfactory, but why should it cause such surprise ? Obviously and only because have, by force of habit, come to accept a quite different atmosphere as normal accompaniment of Post Office business. We assume that when we wish to buy a stamp or send telegram we shall have to enter a dingy building, there to wrestle a dim light with cross-nibbed pens and ink like glue. Yet for years past we have entered an ordinary large shop with an entirely different assumption. have expected—and usually found —a brightly coloured atmosphere of spotless cleanliness and cheerful efficiency. How far this contrast is due to the fact that the Post Office a public Department, while shops are run by private enterprise, is a thorny question on which we need not enter here. That Post Office organisation is in many ways clumsy and out of date is a widely held opinion, but exactly what reforms should be introduced remains highly controversial. In any case, there seems to be no essential reason why the sort of outward reform initiated at Charing Cross should not imitated elsewhere under any system centra! control. The immediate overhaul of every Post Office in the country can scarcely expected, for it would cost too much, but reliable pen-nibs, ink, and blotting-paper are not very expensive, and spirit of courteous efficiency costs nothing at all. To argue that such a spirit exists nowhere but at Charing Cross would very unfair—as unfair arc quite a few of the recurrent grumbles directed against a service which in many respects is remarkably punctual and trustworthy—but far too many Post Offices do still reflect the idea that the public are supplied with postal facilities almost as favour, and that they ought to grateful for being allowed to buy stamps and send telegrams without giving—in writing their reasons for wanting to do so. Actually, the job of running public Post Offices, like all jobs worth doing all, can only done well if it is done with a certain generosity—a desire to give customers something beyond the bare minimum prescribed in official regulations. It is precisely this generous, spacious, willing spirit that seems to distinguish the Charing Cross Post Office, and perhaps the swift welcome it has received will inspire St. Martin's-le-Grand to adopt it, by degrees, normal policy all over the country.
The new Post Office opened this week at Charing Cross is being greeted by the London Press and public with chorus not only of praise, but of positive amazement. What there so startling about the place, which concerned just as usual with ordinary postal routine. Let us try to find out by noting in order the chief features which are drawing so much astonished applause. The new Post Office is spacious, airy and pleasantly lit, with a marble floor and fittings of glass and polished wood The desks for writing telegrams give you plenty of elbow room, and are supplied with pens that write and ink that flows. Close by are large metal waste paper baskets of agreeable modern design. The main desk is on the same ample scale, and there is enough space under the grille for you to receive stamps without bruising your knuckles. A clock on each wall tells you Greenwich time, and in the basement there are 15 telephone booths ventilated by a big central fan. Finally, the staff—all men —are said to be smartly dressed and charmingly courteous. They will answer even foolish questions with a smile, and if you are out of coppers for telephoning they will change pound note as though they enjoyed it. All this is very satisfactory, but why should it cause such surprise ? Obviously and only because have, by force of habit, come to accept a quite different atmosphere as normal accompaniment of Post Office business. We assume that when we wish to buy a stamp or send telegram we shall have to enter a dingy building, there to wrestle a dim light with cross-nibbed pens and ink like glue. Yet for years past we have entered an ordinary large shop with an entirely different assumption. have expected—and usually found —a brightly coloured atmosphere of spotless cleanliness and cheerful efficiency. How far this contrast is due to the fact that the Post Office a public Department, while shops are run by private enterprise, is a thorny question on which we need not enter here. That Post Office organisation is in many ways clumsy and out of date is a widely held opinion, but exactly what reforms should be introduced remains highly controversial. In any case, there seems to be no essential reason why the sort of outward reform initiated at Charing Cross should not imitated elsewhere under any system centra! control. The immediate overhaul of every Post Office in the country can scarcely expected, for it would cost too much, but reliable pen-nibs, ink, and blotting-paper are not very expensive, and spirit of courteous efficiency costs nothing at all. To argue that such a spirit exists nowhere but at Charing Cross would very unfair—as unfair arc quite a few of the recurrent grumbles directed against a service which in many respects is remarkably punctual and trustworthy—but far too many Post Offices do still reflect the idea that the public are supplied with postal facilities almost as favour, and that they ought to grateful for being allowed to buy stamps and send telegrams without giving—in writing their reasons for wanting to do so. Actually, the job of running public Post Offices, like all jobs worth doing all, can only done well if it is done with a certain generosity—a desire to give customers something beyond the bare minimum prescribed in official regulations. It is precisely this generous, spacious, willing spirit that seems to distinguish the Charing Cross Post Office, and perhaps the swift welcome it has received will inspire St. Martin's-le-Grand to adopt it, by degrees, normal policy all over the country.
