United States Postal Service
Newman is an employee of the United States Postal Service, which is portrayed in the series as a powerful and nefarious, yet bureaucratic and inept organization. When they are arrested in "The Engagement", Newman assures Kramer and Elaine that they will not be prosecuted: "Don't worry about a thing. In 20 minutes, that place'll be swarming with mailmen. We'll be back on the street by lunch." Newman's occupation is first revealed in The Old Man, where George, upon learning it, asks "Aren't the guys that always go crazy and come back with a gun and shoot everybody?" Newman's ominous reply is "Sometimes..." Jerry then responds with, "Why is that?" to which Newman answers with a short outburst of anger, showing his disdain for the unending nature of the mail, and for Publisher's Clearing House.
In "The Junk Mail", Kramer realizes the Postal Service has become obsolete and starts an anti-mail campaign; he's soon abducted by Post Office security men. Newman attempted earlier to dissuade Kramer, pleading, "You don't know the half of what goes on here!" At the end of the episode, for his efforts to save Kramer, Newman is seen being escorted by Postal Service employees with a bucket on his head, pleading for Kramer to "tell the world my story."
In "The Package", Newman's business card is shown; it reads "NEWMAN". In "The Junk Mail", he's referred to only as "Postal Employee Newman".
Newman claimed that he once worked the same postal route as American serial killer David Berkowitz, otherwise known as the "Son of Sam", who was working for the Postal Service at the time of his 1977 arrest; Newman claims "we once double-dated". When asked what Berkowitz's postal route was like, Newman commented the route had "a lot of dogs," but joked that they only told him "to lay off the snacks" (a reference to Berkowitz's claim that talking dogs possessed him to go on a killing spree). Newman retains Berkowitz's mailbag as a valuable collector's item. When the police come to arrest him in "The Engagement," his first words to them are, "What took you so long?", the same words Berkowitz used when arrested.
Newman makes several bizarre claims about the Postal Service, including:
- ZIP codes are meaningless. ("The Betrayal")
- No mail carrier has successfully delivered more than 50% of their mail (comparing such a feat to a three-minute mile) ("The Andrea Doria").
- Photos in the mail with a "Do Not Bend" stamp can be creased, crumpled and crammed. ("The Andrea Doria").
- "When you control the mail, you control information." ("The Lip Reader").
- Post office workers go on killing sprees because "The mail never stops! It just keeps coming and coming and coming, there's never a let-up! It's relentless! Every day it piles up more and more and more! And you gotta get it out! But the more you get it out the more it keeps coming in! And then the bar code reader breaks, and it's Publisher's Clearing House day...!"
- Nobody really needs mail (said to Kramer when he tries to cancel his mail in "The Junk Mail").
- There really is no junk mail ("The Soul Mate")
- Postal workers are authorized to take lunch breaks that last three hours. ("The Junk Mail")
- Any packages that arrive at the Post Office with damaged, unreadable, or missing address labels are considered "freebies"; postal workers are thus free to help themselves to the packages' contents. ("The Label Maker")
Read more about this topic: Newman (Seinfeld)
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, postal and/or service:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
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—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1985)
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)