First Class Male
Photo by Kelly Brown
A snaking line of customers fills the office. It evokes Grand Central Station: everyone has places to go and people to see, things to do and packages to send. Echoes of tapping feet and fingers make the rush apparent, and the man behind the counter is silencing them one by one. It’s a busy if not stressful situation, but he’s in good spirits and has a grin on his face.
“Hey! What can I do for you today?” he asks with his reliably cheery tone of voice.
This is Charlie Tholin, the Santa Claus of postal workers. Charlie is the clerk in charge at the Baker University Center post office at Ohio University. And while he may not have Santa’s belly or full, white beard, he has all of Santa’s joyfulness and then some, including a great sense of humor.
“They changed my prescription,” he said of his constant happiness. “I have better drugs now.”
Charlie’s fabulous funny bone and infectious charm is not taken for granted, nor is it new. He has been a proud and friendly employee of the United States Postal Service for 23 years now—with 13 logged at the Baker post office where he always has been, as he likes to put it, “the boss and the entire crew.” That job description includes public relations, as Charlie’s made almost as many friends as letters he’s mailed.
“I like to keep a little running banter going. I know just about everybody who comes in here by name. A lot of these people aren’t customers,” Charlie said. “They’re friends.”
Charlie recalls an OU student who visited him years after graduating. He remembered her face instantly, though he couldn’t immediately recollect her name. After chatting for a few minutes, he recalled her name—first and last—as well as the fact that she spent time in Samoa with the Peace Corps. That encounter occurred 10 years ago, yet he still remembers the conversation in its entirety.
Charlie is a postman with the memory of an elephant and the gratefulness of the Dalai Lama. He’s had ups and downs in his career, and ultimately those brought him to Athens, Ohio. But it was luck that brought him to the postal service.
In 1975 Charlie was working construction in New York, where he grew up. Once that fell through, he moved south to work at the oil refineries outside of Galveston, Texas. That, too, fell through, and upon being given only $60 a week to live off of from unemployment, he made yet another change. He followed a friend of his who had come up to Parkersburg, W.Va., to help build a powerhouse in Willow Island. A few years later he was laid off again and began sending applications to any place that would take them.
“I was out for two and a half years, and then I got hired here,” Charlie said. “When you apply to the post office, you pick three or four different offices to apply to. I got hired in Athens.”
That was back in 1986. Now, Charlie is an old pro at this postman game. He’s faster than any post office clerk out there, as many of his customers can attest.
“I go as fast as I can,” Charlie said. “People know I’m not standing here talking to somebody or sitting in the back drinking coffee.”
Although Charlie used to stress about the constant out-the-door line, it doesn’t bother him anymore. He knows people are on a schedule, and he tries hard to serve everyone quickly—but even Santa can get weary after a long day of work.
“You guys overwhelm me sometimes. Mondays and days after holidays, it’s just a line out the door,” he said. “It’s exhausting sometimes. But, by the same token, somebody will always come in and ask me something that just makes me laugh.”
Other times, people will come in and make him cringe.
Some students don’t know how to label a letter. Others don’t take Charlie’s advice on packaging, even after specifically asking him for it. One student came in to ask Charlie if he had any extra stamps.
“Indeed I do,” Charlie replied, surprisingly devoid of sarcasm. The student paid and went over to the table to put together the contents of his envelope. After watching the student struggle for three minutes, Charlie did it for him. The student thanked the helpful postman and left. “Stuff like this just boggles my mind,” Charlie said.
Any person employed at a university is bound to face some semi-dumb questions and exasperating occurrences, but the way Charlie sees it, at least he gets to hear some interesting stories along the way.
“I get to meet people from all over the world,” Charlie said. “I actually get to talk to some of them on off times, and it’s really interesting to get a personal glimpse of Palestine, or Ghana or China.”
Since OU has a significant international community, Charlie has sent mail just about everywhere: Mongolia, Siberia, Kenya, Ghana, the U.K. and many more. He’s even sent mail to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.
Charlie has conversations with everyone and anyone, discussing anything and everything. One of the few things he rarely exposes, however, is the phoenix tattoo on his arm.
“It just struck me. I had wanted a tattoo for a long time, and I looked and I looked,” he said. “There was just something when I saw that one and I said, ‘I really like that.’ I had it done a couple years after I had heart surgery.”
Another thing most people don’t know: Charlie had an aortic aneurism in 2000.
With endless relocations and layoffs earlier in life and a heart surgery to boot, Charlie has been through a lot. But, as his customers are able to tell, he doesn’t let it get to him.
“You make your job,” Charlie said. “I don’t think anyone really enjoys working here for a living. There’s no sense in being miserable, though. You don’t want me to be miserable. I don’t want you to be miserable. It just makes your day go a lot easier if you’re more positive.”
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