Wait -- was that the TOTALLY FUCKING AMAZING Joe Wilkerson as the postman?

What did the postman do wrong?

I think in the US, some neighborhoods are considered "safe", and others not. It's probably driven by statistics and reports of lost/stolen packages by customers.
As for being home and the package still being at the door, some packages don't require a signature of receipt or person-to-person delivery, it could have been outgoing mail, or they were in the back when the postman rang. The most likely reason is that most delivery people are too lazy/busy/overworked that they will just assume you're not home because (statistically) most people aren't during the day, they'll dutifully ring the doorbell, drop the package, and hoof it back to their vehicle to get to the next address as fast as possible.

Not entirely their fault. I've seen those poor dudes out running around on duty at 9pm at night now.

Utrecht not in France - check, Tour de France in Utrecht - check, f****** 80 kilos of post in three bags, that would be 26.6 kilos per bag, barely possible - reluctant check, dutch postman costume - fake?, usage of f*** - very good, Utrecht postman and TdF security appear to be english - weird and wonderful, couple riding along the TdF route behind the backs of "ello mate" security at 0.45 - cute.

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN54oOMVrXQ

Give me a break this isn't the Tour de France unless it passes through the Netherlands
Non mais zut quoi ....

Edit : My bad : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3150808/Dutch-postman-tears-Tour-France-barrier-argues-security-staff-race-blocking-doing-rounds.html

Would work just as well with Postman Pat or Yakety Sax...

With that in mind here's a list of people that make me variously: scared, uncomfortable, upset and sometimes outright angry. I find it deeply unpleasant and sometimes disturbing to have to deal with them and I think life would be a lot better if we just locked them away.

Police
Politicians
Pro-lifers
Anyone who watches X-factor
Anyone who doesn't think the British royal family are murderous tyrants.
People who play music on their phone speakers on the bus/walking down the street.
People that use the term "free country" without irony.
The unregulated hyper rich over class.
Rugby players on a night out drinking.
People that advocate the death penalty.
Hyper nationalists.
Xenophobes, Racists and Homophobes.
The priesthood of amen/the brotherhood of shadow.
Young people in tracksuits/hoodies.
Anyone that uses the word "party" as a verb.
Practising Christians, Muslims and Jews (doubly so if they are raising their children religiously).
Hyper-Atheists.
Chimpanzees! (seriously, fuck the chimps they scare the shit out of me)
People that use the phrase "I just don't give a fuck" and actually mean it.
The Chinese scientists developing the "death robots" (you might laugh now....)

Whilst some are clearly more serious than others, all of the above represent things/traits which deeply concern me. Many of the people on that list I'd label as outright insane and/or seriously dangerous to my health and well being.

Some, were I to be confronted by them unexpectedly, would outright terrify me, much more so than that lady. There's a good chance that by simply responding with concern and a lack of antagonism she could have been talked down, but certainly pulling an incredulous expression and calling her a crazy lady is not likely to diffuse the situation one iota.

As I said before maybe she is a genuine danger to herself and others, such people do exist and there are systems in place to try and deal with it.

The issue here is that your not even remotely in a position to make that diagnosis, nor are any of us here. We don't know how serious her condition is or how likely she is to respond to various forms of treatment. Speculating based only on video's made during episodes (i.e. at her worst) with no context of her medical history just fuels the kind of knee jerk "lock them away" mindset that contributes heavily to these poor bastards getting the way they are in the 1st place.

For all you know a bit of in the community C.B.T. and mentoring might be all she needs/needed. Not everyone displaying psychotic symptoms benefits from or warrants full on institutional incarceration, it often makes things much worse.
She clearly needs/needed further investigation and perhaps having the benefit of her medical history and first hand interaction it might be reasonable to conclude that some form of isolation is needed. But I'd rather leave that down to those who are professionally qualified to make that judgement than bystanders who merely witnessed a few isolated psychotic episodes and know sweet F.A. about her as a person.

It's you that's failing to see the bigger picture here. You want to put her in a neat little box marked "crazy" so you don't have to face the implication that in some fundamental sense you are the same thing. The crazy person sits next to you on the bus and you think "I don't deserve to have to put up with this inconvenience. How dare they make me feel uncomfortable".......

....Do you have the remotest idea of the kind of deep lasting damage that does to a person when virtually everyone they ever meet thinks and behaves that way? How it feels for someone to just condemn you to be locked away without even attempting to understand what your all about?

It's only about 50 years ago that it was standard practice to basically label everything as just various forms of "madness" and lock them all away in the same building. While we've come along way there's still very much a ways to go and the public perception of acute psychotic illnesses is by far the most backwards.

If you'd said maybe she might need institutional treatment, or that you had concerns that the behaviour she displays could escalate to a violent incident (both legitimate concerns) then I wouldn't have reacted with such hostility.
But you didn't do that, you outright declared she that must be forcibly segregated and treated and moreover that she is definitely a danger to herself and others. No grey area, isolation is the only alternative!

I don't want this to descend into a personal attack, you might after all be a really nice person and this is a deeply rooted prejudice common to most people I come across. Much like many peoples homophobia isn't especially malicious it's just an unchallenged social convention (one fortunately that is changing).
But malicious or not the damage done is the same, for crazies, ethnic minorities and homosexuals alike. And I don't think its unfair to say that the "crazies" are the more vulnerable group by quite some margin.

You don't begrudge offering a little time and understanding for say a disabled person holding you up in a door way, why is taking a little step back when confronted with a "crazy" person so different? That postie clearly recognised she wasn't occupying the same reality as himself very quickly, but his response is to pull a face that says "what the fuck is your problem?" and just dismisses her as crazy. She might have calmed down and gone away peacefully in the space of a few mins if he'd tried to diffuse it, but he didn't, he escalated immediately. (because he's mentally ill too, just in a different way)
That's basically like someone getting in your way, you realizing its because they are in a wheel chair and then treating them like an arsehole because they had the indecency to be out in public and get in the way of the able bodied people! Those bloody cripples, they should be taken away for their own protection! (the fact the rest of us don't have to worry about dealing with them any more is just a bonus naturally )

Now obviously this is a somewhat flawed analogy as people with mobility impairments don't have heightened rates/likelihood of violent outbursts (though I'm sure there are plenty twats who just happen to be in wheelchairs). But the fundamental point I'm trying to make about how people treat the extravertly mentally ill stands. If your being directly threatened with no provocation is one thing, but this guy isn't he's just antagonising someone in a clear state of paranoia and delusion/misunderstanding (which he recognises within seconds). He doesn't even attempt to address that he just closes off and becomes passively hostile.
As I said before its understandable, but only in the same way as being frightened of homosexuality, alien cultures, physical disfigurement etc.. It's just cultural isolation, get to know a few people from any of those groups and it quickly starts to sublime into respect and understanding.

She didn't walk up to him screaming she walked up and firmly presented an accusation that the postman knew could not possibly have been true. She became aggressive/shouty only after he became dismissive, before that she was only restless and paranoid. And even then she didn't make any aggressive physical moves we can see. Postie doesn't look at all in fear for his safety to me, he turns his back on her several times and barely maintains eye contact, not the behaviour of someone that feels physically threatened!

How might she have reacted if postie had looked genuinely scared? Maybe she'd have backed off? Changed her attitude? And yeh maybe she'd have got even more threatening or attacked him with a stick too.

We don't know what she'd have done because we don't know her or anything about her other than a few paranoid videos on the internet. Leave the judgements to the people that have done the research, interviews etc. and know know what the fuck they are talking about with regards to this lady's condition and best treatment.

Speculation is one thing, outright declarations of fact is quite another. People are not guilty before you can prove their innocence...

Apparently the wallaby is called Wesley, who escaped from a farm in 2004 and has been hopping around the nearby countryside ever since. Back in 2009 in the village of Pluckley nearby where this was filmed there was a sighting of a wallaby going over the zebra crossing - that must have looked pretty surreal! This BBC News article describes one family buying wallabies to help trim the garden, got to feel sorry for their postman...

I just realized that a creepy postman named Mr. McFEELY has no business around little kids.

"Dutch postman"? Or "Lance Armstrong, formerly of the USPS"?

>> ^westy:

If my therapist ( if i had one) brought god in to a sessoin i would tell her to fuck off and ask for her to be sacked. like if you went to a therapist and thay started bringing postman pat into something.


If they're asking you how you feel about God or religion then they're doing their job. These are things that will probably have a major effect on how the therapist approaches your treatment.

If they tell you that you need God, especially after you've indicated that you're a nonbeliever, then walk out the door.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@NetRunner I think the point is that if you want to not exist on tax dollars, you don't also get to legislate out competitors.

Big shrug here. I don't really see a problem with that. Maybe if I thought the service we were getting was a bad deal I'd feel differently, but I think we're getting a pretty good deal.

I'm a lot more worried about the near-monopolies we've got in broadband internet and mobile phone service than I am about the USPS's monopoly on 1st class mail service.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
They loose money as well, perhaps it is time to let someone else take a stab at it?

Ahh, do they? Or is their financial situation being weighed down by a requirement Congress saddled them with to pre-fund health benefits?

Again, I just don't see the point in messing with how the Post Office works. It seems like the (half-hearted) efforts from the right to destroy it have more to do with long-term political strategy than an actual effort to make someone's life better.

After all, it's pretty hard to tell people scare stories about how socialism leads to death camps, when one can just point at the postman and say "oh really?"

@VoodooV, not sure I understand why introducing competing currencies would "border on lunacy"? There are compelling arguments in favor of a value backed currency. And being a veteran I would disagree about the health care being "excellent". Adequate, certainly, but I still choose private doctors for all my health care needs.

And government does offer competitive pay. A lot of times better than the private sector. I'd prefer competitive services versus a 'one-size-fits-all' service offered by the government, to be honest. Choice is better than one option any day, and because the government is subsidized by tax dollars they can be unfairly competitive in any industry without having to worry about customer service or market cues.

The DMV and Post Office come to mind. I've never had a pleasant experience at the DMV, but it doesn't matter because I can't refuse to do business with them. And that goes for the US Post Office, because they've got a monopoly on first class mail. If I don't like that the postman bends and crams my mail into my mailbox like he has a personal vendetta against it, I have to suck it up because they're the only first class mail service.

LYRICS:

Only rapper to be called a thief without stealing
Download an MP3 for free, these people hit the ceiling
I'm just a citizen that's teaching you a lesson
for restricting my freedom of expression
How can ideas be possessions when they're freely replicable?
Hence unapplicable property laws are reprehensible
Didn't Jefferson express his opinion on the matter
when he said inventions shouldn't be given a patent
What happened to that thinking, we're stuck in a pattern
where the people with everything are keeping everything from us who haven't
We want it back, look, fed up of adverts, left and right
begging me to buy til there's nothing left of mine
to spend, never mind, who's next in line to testify
that we need laws like these to protect our rights?
Medicine has never been something I'd ever deprive
especially when a life depends on it to survive
Yeah, it takes an incredible effort to develop them right
but putting wealth over health, I said it's never been right

I'm just a citizen that's teaching you a lesson
for restricting my freedom of expression, and I reckon
if old blues themes hadn't been used by Led Zeppelin
we wouldn't ever have any heavy metal then
the history of music would have never even happened
and amusingly there wouldn't even be a Metallica
to tell us that we should hang on the gallows of law
so we wouldn't even need to have a Gallo Report
Oh and by the way the fricking Gallo's support
is made of signatures which have been apparently forged
This shit is sinister, and cannot be allowed to enforce
so tell your ministers and MEPs of how it's been brought about
Although you'll probably get a shallow retort
because the lobbyists have got a grip around all their balls
If I was boss, I'd tell them get the Hell out the door
because I've had enough of corrupt crooks ramming through laws

I'm just a citizen that's teaching you a lesson
for restricting my freedom of expression
Yes, and deep packet inspection? squeeze that up your rectum
If your postman did that to you you'd be having him sectioned
arrested for meddling in your private affairs
But it's only online, right? so why should we care?
Because digital rights should be applicable right
here in real life, and we're not criminals, right?
So this is just why we'll never give up the fight
to be considered innocent until we kick up and die
Giving internet providers responsibility
for the whims of their subscribers infringes privacy
Before the internet, media was a rarity
but how do you expect it to keep its value without scarcity
And that's what scares me, seeing their cons and schemes
to stop their creaking business model being obsolete
What a robbery they pull off so obviously
Don't give a fuck who it affects as long as it's not me
Well I'll keep making copies, see if they can stop me
They'll have to confiscate my PC and take it off me
See there's no problem with taking my property
for creating some lines of binary, blatant hypocrisy
Afraid to face the controversy relating to what we need
Making a profit off it or breaking monopolies