I went to the post office yesterday to mail off my first
eBay sale and was dismayed at the whole
experience.
Let me step back a bit, though, and explain some of the lead-up.
I sold one of my shirts on eBay and was trying to figure out the best
way to get the item in the mail on time. I got payment through
PayPal (which, by the way, turns out to be a
total scam if you want to accept credit card payments, but that’s
another story), and I told the buyer yesterday morning that I’d get the
item in the mail that day.
Facilities at work has a mail scale and postage machine and is nice
enough to sometimes let us buy postage from them directly rather than
going to the post office. I sent an email to the facilities manager to
find out if we could send priority mail with delivery confirmation and
insurance from here. He said they could. So I went down to the mail
room…
… and no one was there. BAH. The facilities manager has to be there
with the key to the postage machine, so no go. I went back to my desk.
I tried about once an hour for a few more hours, but at 2:30p or so,
after not finding him there, I sent another email - “When’s the best
time to come down and mail this?” The response: “In the morning.” No no
no no no! It needs to go out today!
Time to go to the post office.
There are two in the area. One’s a half mile away, one’s five miles
away. I went to the one a half mile away…
… to find out that it’s a “detached carrier unit,” which means you
can drop your stuff off, but they don’t sell postage. Shit. So I went
to the other post office.
Now, you gotta figure - it’s like 3:00p, the lunch rush should be over
and I should be able to get through the PO with minimal effort, right?
Dude, the line was out the door when I got there. They had three
people (out of four possible) working the counters, and it was utter
gridlock. It took me, seriously, nearly 45 minutes to get my package
mailed. Ridiculous. Why does it take so long?
It occurred to me that going to the Post Office is like going to the
DMV. They’re all government workers, which implies they may or may not
have incentive to work any faster; there’s no sense of urgency; there’s
an underlying level of incompetence that you can’t quite put your finger
on; and you don’t have a choice in the matter.
I sat and watched as one of the people working the counter took a
package from a person and walked it around for, seriously, like five
full minutes trying to figure out which bin it went in. There were
only four bins! Pick one!
One customer asked for a particular type of $0.10 stamp. Maybe he’s a
collector or something. The clerk didn’t have it. The clerk asked the
other clerks; they also didn’t have it. The clerk then went on a ten
minute hunt for the stamps, just to find out that they didn’t have
any. Come on, people. If you don’t have the stamp, you don’t have
stamp. Move on!
And you know what? The whole reason I went there was because the
customer I sent the shirt to wanted insurance on a $12 package.
Insurance for $12 costs $1.30. Why?! Bah. If she hadn’t wanted
insurance, I could have printed my postage off my computer - priority
mail with delivery confirmation - and never had to deal with it.
Irritating.