Going Postal

we’ll have the early five-pennies and the dollars out tonight! Great times, eh, sir?”
    “Er…yes,” said Moist. Suddenly the whole world had turned into a kind of Boris—moving fast, inclined to bite, and impossible to steer. The only way not to be ground down was to stay on top.
    Inside the hall, extra makeshift tables had been set up. They were crowded with people.
    “We’re selling them the envelopes and paper,” said Groat. “The ink is free gratis.”
    “Did you think that up yourself?” said Moist.
    “No, it’s what we used to do,” said Groat. “Miss Maccalariat got a load of cheap paper from Spools.”
    “Miss Maccalariat?” said Moist. “Who is Miss Maccalariat?”
    “Very old Post Office family, sir,” said Groat. “She’s decided to work for you.” He looked a little nervous.
    “Sorry?” said Moist. “ She has decided to work for me ?”
    “Well, you know what it’s like with Post Office people, sir,” said Groat. “We don’t like to—”
    “Are you the postmaster?” said a withering voice behind him.
    The voice went into his head, bored down through his memories, riffled through his fears, found the right levers, battened onto them, and pulled. In Moist’s case, it found Frau Shambers. In the second year at school, you were precipitated out of the warm, easygoing kindergarten of Frau Tissel, smelling of finger paint, playdough, and inadequate toilet training, and onto the cold benches governed by Frau Shambers, smelling of Education. It was as bad as being born, with the added disadvantage that your mother wasn’t there.
    Moist automatically looked down. Yes, there they were, the sensible shoes, the thick black stockings that were slightly hairy, the baggy cardigan—oh, yes, arrgh, the cardigan; Frau Shambers used to stuff the sleeves with handkerchiefs, arrgh, arrgh—and the glasses and the expression like an early frost. And her hair was plaited and coiled up on either side of her head in those discs that back home in Uberwald had been called “snails,” but in Ankh-Morpork put people in mind of a woman with a curly iced bun clamped to each ear.
    “Now look here, Miss Maccalariat,” he said firmly. “I am the postmaster here, and I am in charge, and I do not intend to be browbeaten by a member of the counter staff just because their ancestors worked here. I do not fear your clumpy shoes, Miss Maccalariat, I smile happily in the teeth of your icy stare. Fie on you! Now that I am a grown man, Frau Shambers, I will quake not at your sharp voice and will control my bladder perfectly however hard you look at me, oh yes indeed! For I am the postmaster and my word here is law!”
    That was what his brain said. Unfortunately, the words got routed through his trembling backbone on the way to his mouth and issued from his lips as “Er, yes!” which came out as a squeak.
    “ Mr. Lipwig, I ask you: I have nothing against them, but are these golems you are employing in my post office gentlemen or ladies?” the terrible woman demanded.
    This was sufficiently unexpected to jolt Moist back into something like reality. “What?” he said. “I don’t know! What’s the difference? A bit more clay…less clay? Why?”
    Miss Maccalariat folded her arms, causing both Moist and Mr. Groat to shy backwards.
    “I hope you’re not funning with me, Mr. Lipwig?” she demanded.
    “What? Funning? I never fun!” Moist tried to pull himself together. Whatever happened next, he could not be made to stand in the corner. “I do not fun, Miss Maccalariat, and have no history of funning, and even if I was inclined to fun, Miss Maccalariat, I would not dream of funning with you. What is the problem?”
    “One of them was in the ladies’…restroom, Mr. Moist,” said Miss Maccalariat.
    “Doing what? I mean, they don’t eat, so—”
    “Cleaning it, apparently ,” said Miss Maccalariat, contriving to suggest that she had dark suspicions on this point. “But I have heard them referred to as ‘Mister.’”
    “Well, they do odd jobs all the time, because they don’t like to stop working,” said Moist. “And we prefer to give them Mister as an honorific, because, er, ‘it’ seems wrong, and there are some people, yes, some people for whom the word ‘Miss’ is not appropriate, Miss Maccalariat.”
    “It is the principle of the thing, Mr. Lipwig,” said the woman firmly. “Anyone called Mister is not allowed in the ladies’. That sort of thing can only lead to