Behind the boxes where Dartmouth students pick up their mail everyday, country music provides the backdrop for six men and one woman who work tirelessly to make sure that the mail gets into students' hands, or at least their boxes.
Roland Clark, a Lebanon resident, who has worked at the Hinman Boxes for 26 years, described his job as "one of the best jobs on campus."
They work quickly and constantly, stuffing letters into the boxes which line the walls on all sides.
"There's always something to do," said Tom Stebbins, a West Lebanon resident who has worked for the College for 16 years and behind the Hinman boxes for 10 years.
"Mail comes in constantly throughout the day and when that's done there's always package processing or mail forwarding to do," he said.
The Hinman box crew, many of whom have worked for Dartmouth for more than a decade, talk only as they continue to stuff mailbox after mailbox.
Meanwhile, the boxes are continuously emptied from the other side by students who know little of what goes on inside the room in which each member of the crew spends more than 50 hours per week.
Almost every Hinman box worker commented on the job's constant demands. "There is virtually no free time during the day. We work almost constantly except for a 15-minute morning coffee break and a 30-minute lunch break," said Lucille, an Orford resident and post office employee who declined to give her last name.
But no matter how quickly they work, Hinman box workers cannot control the pace of the U.S. Postal Service.
Lucille, remembers numerous times packages from overseas containing food have spoiled during their mailing and have arrived smelling "quite ripe."
Lucille, the only woman on the crew for the past eight years, regrets the lack of contact with anyone outside of the room during the eight and a half hours that she, and the other post office employees, work every day.
Although Lucille regrets being "cut off from the outside," particularly from other women, she said the men at the post office have always treated her with respect and also said she enjoys her job.
Students appear at the package window every few minutes during the off-peak hours and constantly during the lunch hours, eagerly waiting to trade their package pickup slips for whatever the Hinman box crew is holding for them.
Of the few complaints the workers had, the most common addressed students who come to the package window without their package slips, which they have either lost or forgotten. Harlow commented that this situation "makes twice as much work for us."
The crew gave Dartmouth students good reviews for politeness. "People say students are not easy to get along with, but I've really met a lot of nice kids," Clark said.
Clark, who has worked for the College since he graduated from high school 30 years ago, said meeting students is the best part of the job. He estimated that he meets between 300 and 400 people students per day and remembers only one or two problems with students over the years.
While most contact with students is brief, Stebbins recalled a number of students with whom he grew close during their time at the College.
Stebbins even invited former Dartmouth basketball player Crawford Palmer '94 to attend a practice of a youth league basketball team that Stebbins was coaching and remembers the good rapport Palmer had with the kids who then came to watch him play the following season.
Allen Harlow, a Thetford, Vt., man who has worked for the College for the past 20 years and has worked off and on behind the boxes for the past 15, attributes their busy schedules to a college which "keeps getting bigger while employment stays the same."
The Hinman boxes have been expanded at least three times during supervisor Howard Durkee's 32 years working in the post office.
Durkee, an Lebanon resident, said he has "seen the number of boxes expand from only 1,500 when he first began to the 4,720 undergraduate boxes which are in operation today."
Another 400 boxes should be installed soon but it seems unlikely that the new boxes will be the end of the continuous Hinman box expansion. "We definitely need a lot more room," Harlow said.
