Why Italian Post Offices Are Always Crowded

My thanks to contributing bloggista Silvia Bascelli for sharing her perspective on an Italian institution:

L’ufficio postale

The Post Office

It’s worth speaking of the Italian phenomenon that is l’ufficio postale (also called le poste or at times la posta) simply because Italians pass so many hours there. Doing what? Standing in line (fare la fila).

Why? I say, with a bit of wickedness (but not really so much), that the impiegati (employees) are to blame. Keeping in mind that the world’s slowest mammal is the brazilian three-toed sloth (il bradipo del Brasile), I coined the term “bradipo postalis” (postal sloth). But this alone doesn’t explain why “le poste” are always crowded. What are so many people doing there?

An Italian post office doesn’t just take care of so-called “prodotti postali” (mail-related products), such as pacchi (parcels), raccomandate (registered mail) and telegrammi (telegrams), but also deals with many different money services (servizi in denaro), just as a bank does. Because there are post offices everywhere, businesses and public utilities use them as places to collect money from millions of customers nationwide.

And so Italians go to the post office to pay bills (electricity, gas, telephone), fines, the fee for public television, and the car tax, among many others. They also can pay for various services provided by offices and public agencies, such as drivers’ licenses and trash collection. Nowadays you can pay for some of these services at different places, such as the tabaccaio (tobbaconist). You also can sign up for direct debit from your bank account, but a large number of Italians don’t want to try this system.

The post office is not only a place to pay bills but also a place to collect money, particularly una pensione (a pension). Le poste basically serve as a treasury (una tesoreria) for all of the pension funds in Italy. Pensions, of course, mean persone anziane (old people), often not very familiar with the postal system. They may get distracted, miss their turn, and then try to get back in line, or they may have trouble signing a receipt because they can’t see very well.

Americans, accustomed to personal bank accounts, might wonder if we Italians can have our pensions directly credited into our accounts rather than going in person to collect the payment in cash. Of course we can! However, many old people — my mother among them — want to experience il piacere “irrinunciabile” di toccare i soldi con le mani (the “unrenouncable” pleasure of actually touching their money with their hands). And so they and the relatives who accompany them end up in file pazzesche (crazy lines).

In addition to the money operations that cause most of the crowding, there are the mail services. You go to the post office to send a registered letter, a parcel (le poste also sell packaging materials), or a telegram (even if e-mails have made them nearly obsolete). If you weren’t home to receive a certified letter or a package, you need to bring the receipt that the postman left in your mailbox to le poste.

L’ufficio postale also sells stamps, but no one is so insane as to line up just for stamps (francobolli). In Italy you can buy stamps at the tobacconist, which is a totally different story.

Words and Expressions

andare alle poste — go to the post office
l’imballaggio — packing or wrapping material
una modalità di pagamento — a payment method
riscoutere la pension — collect one’s pension
postino — postman