Hongkong Post told its postmen and postal assistants late Monday there are "no conditions" to make their jobs permanent. About 200 staff are affected, most of them near the end of the standard probation period civil servants sit through before they get made permanent. Two years of walking your route in the rain, sorting mail in July heat, and the department's answer is basically: thanks, but no.

Here's the bit that gets me. Hongkong Post is a government department. It's not a startup deciding it can't afford headcount, it's Hong Kong's postal service telling its own frontline staff there's no budget line for the people who've been doing the job for two years already. You'd think after two years of showing up, someone could find a way to say yes. Instead a couple hundred postmen and postal assistants go back to square one, on a government payroll that apparently can't commit to the people delivering the government's own mail.