2002-02-19 - 4:47 p.m.
In general I have a lot of respect for postal workers. They�re underpaid, they�re overstressed, their supervisors are assholes, they work under a nightmarish stopwatch-driven management system that hasn�t changed since the 1890s, they live under the omnipresent threat that one of their number will flip out and go on a killing spree--and yet with all that they still manage to get my mail where I want it to go, on time, most of the time.
(As an aside, remember the early years of the Reagan era when the post office was ridiculed as an example of everything that was wrong with Big Gubmint? Well, last time I mailed a letter back east first-class it got there in two days and only cost me 34 cents. The last time I had to "overnight" something via Airborne Express it cost me 20 times as much and took a week to reach its destination. Yay private enterprise.)
Plus, the postal workers I know personally all have great taste in music and awesome CD collections to match.
Until today I�d never tried to mail anything book-rate, though.
OK, I guess not all postal workers are cool.
There were a few books lying around the house that belonged to a co-worker in another city, and since my car was in the shop all weekend and I was cooped up at home I figured now was a good time to pack them up and return them. Said co-worker isn�t especially anxious to have them back, so, being the frugal type, I decided to mail them book-rate. I�ve heard all manner of horror stories about doing this, from Shiitake and others, and so I already knew that every post office in the land has its own book-rate Nazi, but I�d never actually met one and in the absence of empirical evidence I had doubts as to their existence. Not anymore.
First of all, let me just say that the book-rate Nazi at my post office bears a striking--and frightening--resemblance to Gladys Kravitz from "Bewitched." Let me also say that she has a huge-ass multicolored mole right above her left eyebrow and that I could. Not. Stop. Staring at it the whole time I was there. Finally, let me say that she lived up to her reputation. I swear, she must take forever to fall asleep at night because her brain just keeps cooking up scenario after scenario in which some malodorous malefactor defiles and abuses the institution of Book-Rate Mail.
Rendered into the old BASIC programming language, our exchange would look something like this:
10 MIG "I�d like to send this book-rate, please."
20 BRN "Anything besides books in here?"
30 MIG "No."
40 BRN "No letters, no notes? Nothing but books?"
50 MIG "That�s right."
60 BRN "Are you sure?"
70 MIG "Yes."
80 BRN "ARE YOU SURE?"
90 MIG "YES, I�M SURE."
100 GOTO 80
I could have written ANTHRAX: DO NOT EAT on the outside of the package and gotten better treatment from her, so long as I was sending it first class. Jiminy Christmas.
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