Postal Craziness

So, loyal blog readers, I don’t know if you knew this or not, but the United States Postal Service increased its rates, effective yesterday. That means today was the first business day with the new rates. And I had 9 bills to go out, with only the old 37-cent stamps and five 1-cent stamps to my name; the new first class, standard letter postage rate is now $0.39. But I had to go to the post office today anyway to mail out my Garden Exchange gift for the Stitching Blogger’s Exchange, so I’ll pick up some 2-cent stamps, right?

WRONG-O! We woke up late and I nearly worked from home today because I had nothing scheduled that required me to be in the office; however, that little voice in my head would not allow me to not send out the exchange on time. So, I decide to go straight to the post office and then into work. Get to the post office after 10:00 AM and there are NO parking spots. I get out, go into the post office and find a line inside. I guess that matched the lack of parking outside. As I’m standing at the end of the line, a man in a wheelchair (who, for some reason, struck me as a veteran of the armed services) starts to wheel away from the counter and on the way out, tosses an angry remark over his shoulder, telling the employees to tell the Postmaster what a rip-off this is. I’m assuming he was referring to the rate change. And then one of the two employees working the counter (there are registers for 3 people, not sure why there wasn’t a third) calls out that for anyone waiting for 1-cent or 2-cent stamps, they are sold out. Cue a couple of people stomping out of line in disgust. Can you imagine? The first day they are open for business after the rate change and by 10:00 AM, they are already sold out of the stamps needed to validate my couple dozen unused old stamps. *sigh* I do NOT envy those employees.

So, I get to the counter and get the exchange package out of the way. Then, I ask the guy about exchanging the three unused booklets of stamps that I had brought with me (fortunately, I got a clue from my favorite employee at that particular post office the last time I was there that I would be able to trade in my full, unused booklets for new stamps). He starts to work through the exchange, but runs into a problem. At this point, the girl at the other register is looking over to see what the problem is and then comes over to help. Which means that little old me has managed to hold up the entire works. She makes some comment about wanting to void the entire transaction, but the package has already been registered into the system, so she doesn’t want to do that. So, I suggest that we complete the transaction for the package and then start over again for the stamp exchange. Which he does. And then proceeds to still run into problems with the stamp exchange, so he tries something different and finally gets the exchanges through the system and I purchase 3 books of new stamps in the process. Now, the last hurdle is to buy some sort of extra postage for the remaining 7 bills that I have that need to go out (remember, I had five 1-cent stamps, so I was able to send the two bills that were nearly late). Fortunately, an older gentleman a few places ahead of me in line was smart enough to ask if they had any 3-cent stamps left (which is $0.01 more per letter than necessary). I don’t mind paying a few cents extra just to get my bills out on time, so I buy 7 of them. The guys rings everything up and it seems a little expensive, but at this point, I feel so bad for him and I just want to get out of there. So, he hands me the receipt, I look at the extra 7 stamps that he’s just given me and realize that they are 39-cent stamps, so I politely correct the guy, he sheepishly takes them back and gives me the correct 3-cent stamps. It’s only when I get out to the car and I’m checking the receipt, trying to figure out why it’s a couple of dollars higher than I expected, when I realize that what he scanned and charged me for was seven 39-cent stamps. And I dumbly had the clerk switch them for 3-cent stamps. A $2.52 mistake that I SWORE to myself I was going to let go. And I have, pretty much. I’m not angry or anything; I just hate to waste money. And I feel really bad for the clerks because at some point the inventory isn’t going to tally up and also because they were having a REALLY BAD day. The girl next to him said that she didn’t think she was going to make it through the entire day. And this was just a couple of hours after opening. Now, y’all know where the term “going postal” originated, right?

Yeah, there are days when I think my work is bad. But then I remember the fact that I’m able to walk in the door at 11:00 AM and no one looks at me funny because they know I’ll put in the hours and do whatever I need to in order to get my job done. In fact, I don’t even have to come into the office at all, if I don’t want or need to. And I provide service with a smile, even when I want to reach through the phone and throttle the person on the other end who is asking me a really stupid question that we’ve gone over before. Trust me, folks, smiling when you’re on the phone counts. Fortunately, I don’t have that concern when I’m responding via email, but I do have to make sure I don’t type what I’m thinking. 😉 When in doubt, save as draft and come back to the email before sending it. Saves your behind every time! 😆