As Vashon Post Office continues to stagger through a crippling staffing shortage at the height of the holiday season, local residents have formed a sort of Greek chorus on social media.

In the digital hue and cry on Vashon’s community pages, islanders lament that they have not received important items including medications, or that their packages have been stacked atop their mailboxes, or that their mail has simply disappeared.

These voices cue the ones who then speak ominously of how postal theft has picked up on Vashon, carried out by criminals on wheels who follow the postal trucks, scooping up packages left by the side of the road.

Others, striking more practical and problem-solving notes, plead for kindness to postal workers, and offer advice on how to help ease the pain: order less online, buy a bigger mailbox, and other such solutions.

In this saga, as detailed in this week’s Beachcomber, other voices can be heard as well, such as that of the Denver-based spokesperson for USPS, for instance, outlining some of the particular problems plaguing our island.

These include Vashon’s long and twisted driveways, its isolation in Puget Sound without reliable ferry service, and lack of affordable worker housing. He too, calls for islanders to replace their flimsy mailboxes.

But the most important voices missing from social media as well as our coverage this week are the leading characters in this drama — its heart and soul.

These are the postal workers, the mail carriers trapped in the middle of a workplace nightmare that starts every morning when they wake up.

Not again, they must think, as their eyes blink open. Not another day of this.

Postal workers on Vashon, or anywhere else, are not allowed to talk to the press, nor do they post on Vashonites Rants about their tribulations.

And so we are not hearing their stories — and even if we did, we could never even hint that any of them had talked to us here at the newspaper.

But we can tell you what we think they might say if they did come forward.

We think they would tell us that they are mentally and physically exhausted from toiling in a broken workplace, where they are expected to do the impossible day after day.

We think they would tell us that Christmas is the worst time to be a postal worker, but this year, it is worse than ever.

We think they would tell us that it is physically perilous for them to drive overstuffed trucks, and walk down long, dark, rutted driveways to deliver heavy packages to houses, and that yes, you should truly consider getting a big, roomy, rural postbox.

They might tell us some other things too — about what it feels like to be yelled at in their workplace, by customers, day after day, about a situation that is not of their making — or even mismanaged by their higher-ups, who push the boundaries of their union contracts. Such is the case for workers everywhere.

The problems at the post office define the word “systemic” and at the same time, they are all deeply personal to those standing in the center of the maelstrom.

If we could all try to see this story from the angle of the workers who are the most damaged by this situation, we might actually all be better able to work together to do what we can to fix it.

Vashon-Maury Island Community Council is meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 15, both in-person at the Land Trust Building and on Zoom, and the post office problems are on the agenda. At the meeting, Heather Volpe, from King County Sherrif’s Office, will be present — and we hope she will be able to detail the extent of postal theft that is also a part of this problem.

For details on the meeting’s agenda and how to attend, visit v-mcc.org.