A friend of mine lost his wallet just the other day. Not much cash inside, hi said, but things more important like his ID card which in Spain is very essential to have with you all the time, to prove your existence (!), and the driving license which he must have for his daily journeys to work. Luckily he had good enough sense not to put all his credit cards in there as well. Such replacements take time and much paper work to replace. He had of course immediately started the troublesome procedure of application, but before the related forms come through, just 4 days after, he received in his own letter box a thick envelope containing his lost wallet, and a brief and amiable letter from the Post Office, informing him his wallet was found inside one of the Letter Boxes. Great service.
It would seem that amongst thieves there are some more 'responsible' ones who have certain principles. Apparently similar incidents have been repeated fairly often according to the Post Office, that once the cash has been extracted, personal documents and the wallet itself, unless it's of pure crocodile skin or gold trimmed, are usually dropped into the letter boxes. This shows that some thieves have great faith in the Post Office doing the right thing to lessen their guilt for them, returning the essential papers to the rightful owners.
In this day and age, very few people use the Post Office any more, email is of course much easier, faster and cheaper. But the Post Offices have resisted the decline and still plod along doing their job faithfully. There are still some people who use them, not too often but regularly, mostly packets and parcels for instance.
I have, maybe not too logically, got quite used to the sight of the kind of letter boxes, mostly in the shape of a low painted column, dotted here and there in street corners and pavements. They have been part of a urban scene I have known well all my life, and quite interesting during travels to see the different varieties, sizes, colours and shapes in different countries, with their different languages and styles in the indication of collection days and hours. Some even look quite artistic. And they have resisted the changing of times, graffiti, vandalism and, I suppose, maintaining them in good order and functional costs sizeable public funds.
Those traditional grooves or slots that are on the front of each Post Office with the orientation signs on each like: 'Barcelona', 'Rest of Spain', 'International' are not sufficient now for easier sorting; they need to add one more marked 'Stolen wallets & purses'. The 'law abiding' thieves would thus feel more civil and their selfless action of returning documents publicly appreciated.
Tags: civilthieves, letterbox
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