Neither anthrax nor the New England winter can stop Sam McClary, who is not even wearing a jacket.

A gust of cold wind hits the Science Center mailroom supervisor in the face as he walks out of the building’s basement onto the loading dock to receive the daily Federal Express delivery.

“Oh Paul, that’s a big one. Can you give me a two-wheeler?” he bellows, beckoning for shy, bespectacled Arlington resident Paul Riley—another mail room worker—to bring him a dolly.

It’s 9:40 a.m. Tuesday morning and below freezing as the 61-year-old McClary, a Mattapan resident with a “Science Center” sweatshirt to match his gray hair, loads the 30-odd packages onto a dolly.

“I don’t wear a jacket so I won’t have to keep running to put it on when I go outside,” McClary says. “But I’m wearing a t-shirt and undershirt, so it’s not too bad,” he adds.

A shivering woman wearing a jacket, scarf and gloves walks by.

“We’re really hectic today,” he says as he hurriedly pushes the two-wheeler into the mailroom. Valentine’s Day is a week away, one of the mailroom workers is on vacation and the spring semester is just underway—making this week one of the busiest of the year.

As McClary records the arrival date of a package bound for the Harvard Foundation, a first-year with a buzzcut arrives at the mailroom window to ask for a package.

Johany Freitag, an effervescent mailroom worker from the Dominican Republic who sports black glasses and black hightop sneakers, begins chatting with Josue Guinart-Carrero ’05 in Spanish before walking to the back room where she finds the Math 21a textbook he ordered online.

“She feels like a friend of the family,” says Guinart-Carrero, whom Freitag also knows as box 1561. “It seems really natural talking to her.”

Mailroom workers have been befriending students for years.

“We had a girl two years ago who brought us all sweatshirts after Christmas break, we’ve had mothers who’ve sent us cookies and there was a girl who sent pistachio nuts from California,” McClary says.

Mailroom favors run in the other direction as well, adds Peter Romeo—a Cantabrigian clad in a purple shirt and black jeans who also works as a crossing-guard—as he sorts newly-received packages.

“I met some guy looking though the recycling bin. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was looking for a New Yorker [magazine]. We always get a few extra New Yorkers so I always make sure to stick an extra one in his box,” Romeo says.

“How Can You Not Know You Have a Mailbox?”