Written by Heidi Tabor
Leading up to Valentine’s Day, the Postal Services Center dealt with three consecutive snow days that caused a major delay in the distribution of cards, flowers and notes celebrating the holiday.Because of the heavy snow during the three weekdays leading up to Valentine’s Day, there was a delay of all postal, UPS and FedEx mail. In fact, none at all could make it onto campus throughout the three days, so the bulk of the snow day mail was delivered on Monday, pushing special Valentine’s Day deliveries to Tuesday.”Because of the inclement weather, carriers weren’t able to get the mail into the facilities here in Searcy, so they brought a lot of it on Monday, which was Valentine’s Day,” said Jason White, assistant director of postal services. “Then a lot of it came the following day: The things that were supposed to be here on Valentine’s Day, which is why it was a problem.”Once the packages arrived on campus, they arrived in such a large quantity that it took all day to put them into student and faculty mailboxes, White said. Typically, all mail is distributed by 1 p.m., but even with student workers putting in extra hours, it was 4:30 p.m. before their work was done.White said that some parents called to ask about boxes of flowers that had not been delivered, many of which were delayed until the following day.Senior Heather Semmelmann said her fiance had mailed her flowers for Valentine’s day. Unaware of what was in the package, she had been given a tracking number to know when it had arrived. While the package arrived on Valentine’s Day, Semmelmann said that she was unable to pick it up due to the backup with providing yellow pickup slips to students.When Semmelmann received her yellow slip at lunch the next day, she said the flowers her fiance sent her were wilted, and the papers that came with them were damaged.”While I understand that Valentine’s Day is probably one of the busiest days for the post office, it makes me upset to know that they would hand out packages while more time-sensitive items are sitting in the back of their office,” Semmelmann said. “I feel the logistics could have been more efficient and a better plan needs to be made for next year so that someone else does not receive wilted flowers the day after Valentine’s Day.”Director of Postal Services Randy Smith has been on staff since March 2004 and said that while Valentine’s Day is typically the busiest day of the entire year, beating out both Christmas and Club Week, this year’s holiday was the single busiest day he had ever experienced at Harding.On an average day in the Harding Postal Services Center, anywhere from 400 packages, 4 to 8 feet (about 670 to 1,300 letters) of first class mail letters and 800 pieces of on-campus mail arrive to be distributed to student and faculty mailboxes. Comparatively, the Valentine’s Day deliveries for this year included 1,935 packages, 36 feet (or about 6,000 letters), 4,500 pieces of campus mail and 1,800 “bumpies,” or cards with pieces of candy attached to them.Despite the delay, White said students and faculty were very understanding about not receiving their Valentine’s Day treats in time.”Basically we just wanted to thank everyone because there was a large influx of mail that didn’t go up in the boxes, including Valentine’s Day candies and cards that students send to one another,” White said. “We wanted to thank everyone for their patience. We know that it can be frustrating when you’re expecting something and you don’t receive it. We are thankful to all the students, faculty and staff because everyone seemed to be very understanding that day.”White said Wednesday that the postal service has now caught up with all mail and should experience no further problems.
