One southwest Missouri community saw a role reversal Tuesday.
A group of homeowners delivered a message to their postmaster.
About 30 residents of Shell Knob in southern Barry County protested outside their post office.
They say their post master's got to go.
They refer to her as rude, hateful, and unprofessional, and they claim their rights are being violated.
The United States Postal Service tells a significantly different tale.
The citizens’ message arrived in the form of signs and chanting in the parking lot of the Shell Knob Post Office thanks to priority shipping.
They say the relationship with their post master is a priority.
And it's been going downhill ever since her arrival a year and a half ago.
“I said I need to know how long this package has been here and where it has been because this is my medication,” explains Lee James, who claims she is a victim of delayed delivery; she says the postmaster let a parcel containing her medicine sit in the post office for five days.
“This is very upsetting,” editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Jeannie Jones tells KSPR.
She says she’s a victim of changed delivery.
She says the postmaster distributed her papers on the wrong day and tried to raise her rates.
“We’ve been a weekly paper for 25 years, and I’ve been mailing it on Wednesday ever since. I knew I had the right rate."
The entire group is enraged the postmaster removed the wall of honor- pictures of military members that used to hang inside the building.
We attempted to contact the postmaster to find out if she thinks there's any truth to these allegations but she wasn't at work Tuesday, and she didn't return any of our phone calls.
But a post office spokesperson did.
“It’s unfair to portray the post master as the driving force behind some of the issues."
Richard Watkins tells KSPR many of the changes were made by district or federal officials.
He says supervisors met with what he calls this small minority of dissatisfied customers earlier this month to resolve those issues, but their solution of a transfer will not be getting the USPS stamp of approval.
“The postmaster in shell knob has the full support of her operating manager,” says Watkins.
About a year ago the 1,200 residents signed a petition to have the wall of honor put back up.
They sent to their state representative and several state and US senators.
The spokesperson we talked to says the wall has simply been moved to a less disruptive place; the citizens claim it's no where to be found.