The Means of Communication

Look through the story and write out words and expressions on the topic “At the Post Office”

The post office

The General Post Office and local post offices have many duties. They not only deliver letters, telegrams, newspapers and magazines, but, among other things, they pay out old-age pensions, subscribe for periodicals and take and deliver parcels.

If you subscribe for periodicals, you must fill in a Subscription Order Form, stating your address and the names of newspapers and magazines. They may be left at the post office “until called for” or delivered to your address.

Inside the post office is a long counter divided into departments for parcels, stamps, registered and air-mail letters, telegrams, money-orders, etc.

There is a post-box in all post offices, or you can drop your letters and postcards into one of the familiar red and blue post-boxes attached to some houses in the street.

There are several collections a day and your letter will soon reach the addressee.

Do you want to send a telegram? Just ask for a telegram form at the post office counter or take one from the box in the small compartments provided for the writing of telegrams and fill it in. You can send your telegramme, letter or a document by fax. This is a modern form of telegraphy for the transmission of the fixed images (the text of a telegramme, or a letter, or an original document, etc.) They will be reproduced and sent to and received by the addressee instantly.

Perhaps you want to buy a stamp or a stamped envelope to send a letter, then go the counter where they sell postcards, envelopes, blocks of stamps and stamps of different denominations, or get them from a slot machine.

When we have written a letter we sign it, fold it up and put it in an envelope. We stick down the flap, write the address of both the addressee and the sender and stick it on a stamp in the upper right-hand corner, if it is not a stamped envelope. If it is an air-mail letter, we get an air-mail envelope.

Don’t forget to write the mailing code – it includes the index number and the post office number which serves the addressee.

If your letter contains anything valuable, it is a good idea to register it. When you register a letter the clerk gives you a receipt and you pay the registration fee.

If you go to the post office to send off a parcel, you will have the parcel weighed at the parcels-counter. You may also have your parcel insured if you want to declare its value.

You can also send books or other printed matter by post office there.

At the post office you can send money by post. You should fill in a money-order form stating the name of the recipient or payee, his address, as well as the sender’s address, and the sum of money you are sending. The clerk takes your money together with the money-order and gives you a receipt.

Very often there is a branch savings bank as well as municipal service counter, housed under the same roof as the post office.

The savings bank is very convenient for those who want to open an account. Every depositor has a savings-bank book and can deposit or withdraw a certain sum of money on presenting this book. Now you don’t have to complete a paying-in or a paying-out (withdrawal) form. You just tell the clerk the sum of money you want to deposit or withdraw. The procedure is computerized and it doesn’t take you a lot of time.

At the municipal service counter we pay the rent, electricity and gas bills, and the telephone rental.

If you want to receive your old-age pension in person, you should go to your local post office. But nowadays you can use the Automatic Credit Transfer System: if you have a bank account, your money is automatically put into it (your pension, salary, grant) or taken out of a bank account at your requests (to pay your rent for the flat, etc.) On a special check issued by a bank you write details for the bank to pay money from your account.

These are the principal functions of the post office.

Ex. 1 Find the equivalents for the following words and word-combinations in the text:

Доставлять письма, телеграммы,