Alexandra Willet

Alexandra Willet was the Post Office counter clerk who attained Heroine of the Post Office status by building on the queueing system devised by former Postmaster-General Elwes. She refined the principle, in the light of hard-won experience, to ensure customers needed to queue seperately at differently designated windows to (i) purchase stamps; (ii) sent the attached stamps previously bought at a different window on a letter or parcel; and {iii) to obtain sundry bureaucratic items like cart licences. This guaranteed jobs for three staff when previously only one was needed, and generally trebled levels of confusion and ill-feeling among merged lines of customers in major Post Office branches. It is not known if the Willets are related to the Maccalariats. But on this promising basis, the answer may well be "yes"..