More Stuff For The BS Bag

It’s time to get out the BS Bag again, and toss in something that really ticked me off recently. To be “stuffed” are the over-helpful, Mother Teresa-style clerks at my local U.S. Post Office branch. They came to my attention the other day when I went to mail a small package. I planned to be in and out in less than three minutes, but my time in line ended up far exceeding the length of most S.W.A.T. team hostage rescues.

Of course, when I got there only two clerks were at their stations taking customers. The other three, I assume, had been tipped off that I was coming, and decided to bust my nads by taking their lunch and/or coffee breaks the minute they saw my Corolla roll into the parking lot. Two clerks for about five customers, however, didn’t seem too bad, so as I waited to advance my position, I started observing what was going on at the service counter.

Clerk One was trying to explain passport obtaining procedures to a gentleman who didn’t understand English very well. It was an interesting scene to watch… a Chinese postal clerk trying to speak Spanish to a guy I think spoke Portuguese or maybe Hungarian. Anyway, she was showing him the necessary forms and trying to explain how to fill them out. Then they began discussing his family members who were loitering near the Passport Application Door, which of course was locked because it was either the wrong time to be standing there, or the passport clerk thought that I was going to want a passport, too, so he exited the building just as his cagey cohorts had done earlier.

The second clerk, also the product of a mainland China job fair, was plying her rudimentary Spanish-speaking skills as she dealt with a little Hispanic lady who was trying to mail a package not much bigger than mine. Experiencing momentary optimism that the line would soon be moving, the clerk suddenly told the lady that the package was wrapped incorrectly, and needed to be redone. But instead of the patron relinquishing her spot and going away to correct the problem, the opposite occurred. The clerk began doing it for her, starting from cutting off the lady’s numerous string bindings, to removing the LA Times newspaper in which it was wrapped. Then she examined and repositioned the contents, shook the box to see if it rattled, closed the flaps, and circled the box with yards of colorful (and tax payer paid-for) postal tape, always making sure to cover each seam, each crease, and every possible air hole. When she was done many minutes later, the package looked like a gaudy, rectangular Egyptian mummy ready to be put in a postal sarcophagus.

Things didn’t get any more speedy during the next fifteen minutes. Clerk One was still trying to explain the passport “hours of operation” schedule, and that the ominous door to the passport cubicle was barred to the man and his family for operational, not personal reasons. And while it didn’t look like the man either understood or was buying the clerk’s “line,” they plodded forward by reviewing a long, itemized checklist of things that he and his clan would need to present, that is, if and when the door ever opened.

Back at Station Two, the clerk was now conducting a personal interview and actually filling out the necessary forms the little Hispanic lady needed to have her package signed for when it reached its destination. She also offered gentle encouragement as the elder patron scoured her purse for bits and pieces of paper on which said information was written. And of course, to complete the process, the clerk had to look up the city/state zip code which had been originally omitted, as well as determine which of the five rates the lady was willing to pay based on the time it would take the package to get to that previously unzip-coded address. Yikes!! It just went on, and on, and ON !!!

Now, lest you think I lack compassion for the weak, the helpless, or the inept…… postal customer, that is, you’d be wrong. And were you to intimate that I regularly disparage the dedicated souls whose job it is to serve their postal needs, you’d be wrong again. But there is a limit to my patience. I mean, when it takes longer to explain the passport process than it would take for me to hide the man and his family in the trunk of my car and drive them to their destination, that‘s bovine backwash. And when a postal clerk does everything for a customer except actually supply the objects to be shipped in her package, then that’s boiling bull borscht, as well.

What’s next… a diaper changing service for patrons whose kids drop a load in the waiting line? I mean, the “U. S.” in front of “Post Office” doesn’t stand for “unlimited services,” or “until satisfied.” Perhaps the solution is as simple as requiring customers who don’t speak English to bring an interpreter when conducting postal business. Or perhaps when the customers waiting in line drop to the floor in a skeletal heap due to waiting so long, a supervisor should intervene and move the process along. Something needs to be done. Either that or I’m going to save time and start walking my packages across the country.