Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Post Office Line Rules

I go to the post office every day for work. This is not a bad gig. I get to leave the office every single day at 10am. I check the post office boxes (yes, multiple), leave outgoing mail, get supplies if necessary (most only certified mailing papers, we sent A LOT of certified mail.)

Most days I don’t even have to go into the area where you have to interact with the postal workers. I just go to post offices boxes and the drop box.

But the other day, I had to go in and drop off…you guessed it, a certified letter and get the receipt date stamped.

So I got my stamp and went to the first of the six PO boxes I check each day. The very first one had an envelope in it addressed to one box below the actual box it was in. So…back to the counter I went to give the dude the envelope in hopes of it making it to the correct box.

Then I went back and checked the other five boxes, sure that I’d be on my way back to work in no time.

Only too bad for me, because after I got my receipt stamped and then dropped off the outgoing mail in the drawer, I checked the PO boxes and guess what? There was one of those yellow tickets (not a yellow ticket of leave, I’m not 24601) that say something like, “So sorry we missed you, please bring this to the counter to pick up your mail.”

Yes, I had to go BACK inside and wait for the postal workers behind the counter.

While I’d been gathering mail from the other five boxes, I heard the doors open and heard the lady postal worker call out, “Hello, I’ll be right with you.”

There were two workers that day, a lady-type person and a dudish person. The dude was at the far register and the lady was at the register closer to the doors through which customers enter.

I went back in to the counter area and this little old man was waiting closer to the door.

See, the lady-type worker was the one who’d spoken to him and so he was waiting closers to her area.

Now, I don’t know how your post office works but ours has a counter on the customer side of the counter. Waiting patrons wait on the far side of the counter for the next available worker.

The little old man was not where one usually waits but it didn’t matter. We’d both get helped in good time.

And hey, I was on the clock so whatever.

But alas, it DID matter to the woman who entered a few minutes after I did.

Little Old Man and I were waiting just inside the door.

This woman entered and within seconds, she realized that we were NOT waiting where we were SUPPOSED to be waiting. You’d think the world was going to end.

She informed me, “The line starts over there.”

I raised an eyebrow and said, “Yes, I know. But he was here first.”

She didn’t care.

She told me again, “But we wait over there.”

I narrowed my eyes and said, “I know.” Then I pointed at Little Old Man.

What the hell difference did it make where we waited? There were two workers and only three of us customer. The line was bound to MOVE fairly quickly.

But because this woman was the BOSS of LINES, she had the nerve to go up and take Little Old Man’s arm and LEAD him to where he should be waiting.

OMG! Seriously?

Then, she happily and probably SMUGLY took her place behind me, thrilled that all was right with the line at the post office.

Then..THEN! She started to explain to the back of my head that if we didn’t start the line where we SUPPOSED to start it, it would get all backed up when the post office got busy.

Guys? It was a TUESDAY…in May.

She actually mentioned how busy the post office gets during CHRISTMAS, like that somehow justified her audacity at TOUCHING poor Little Old Man. Did I mention that we were FIVE MONTHS past Christmas, which puts us SEVEN MONTHS before Christmas? What the hell does the fact that the post office gets busy during Christmas have to do with anything about that particular day?

I very pointedly ignored every single word she said because I didn’t CARE about her REASONS for doing what she’d done and I refused to give her the satisfaction of a response to her excuses.

I’m sure, though, that she left the post office that day feeling quite proud of herself for taking the time to school us commoners on the CORRECT way to line up at the Angola Post Office.

For what it’s worth, by the time I’d left with my envelope and bag of other miscellaneous mail, she was being waited on, Little Old Man had already left and…there was no one else waiting in line for service.

So yeah, waiting six feet from the ‘beginning’ of the line would have caused SO much trouble for ALL of the ZERO people who came in after the Postal-Line Police Woman, also known as HAG.

And get this, after all her explanations of the place getting crowded and the line being backed out the door were so very obviously ignored, she tried to get on my good side while I was waiting for the dude postal worker to get my envelope from where ever postal workers go when they leave the counter (ignore the man behind the curtain) by saying that Little Old Man reminded her of her dad, who’d died last year and she was just so enjoying this little bit of time with Little Old Man, as if he were some sort of surrogate dad for her.

Yeah, okay, Lady, whatever you say. Just because strangers who line up ‘WRONG’ remind you of your dearly departed Papa, don’t go around TOUCHING them. I mean…for reals. This is kind of a rule, as in the most important of all Post Office Line Rules.

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