I’ve spent a fair amount of time in post offices and they’re all generally frustrating, but they’ve all attained different levels of this quality. Long lines: probably. Grumpy people (customers and/or post officers): most likely. Kafka-esque conversations: Yes please! My Brooklyn post office is…pretty terrible. I go in expecting that there will be long lines and that if I have a question it’s 50-50 whether the teller will know the answer (which is not a critique of the teller/post officer…it is, however, a structural critique, because the post office is like many fine institutions in that it’s designed to make accountability a shifty quality that bounces back and forth among different segments of the company and eventually falls to the ground, dead). I’m just happy that you can buy stamps from a machine instead of waiting in line.
In any case, I try to avoid the post office unless I miss a delivery (tiny mailbox=this happens often, although occasionally I’ve had an almost-fitting package stuffed into my mailbox and then been unable to get it out, because it would only fit out the top of the mailbox, the way it came in…like the mailbox needed to regurgitate instead of—ANYWAY, I digress, and it doesn’t egress). The “missed package” window is pretty straightforward and usually has a much shorter line than the general one. That is, unless it’s either closed (as it was the other day, and they did have a flat-rate envelope sort of propped up in the window, but it’s a post office, so it wasn’t exactly out of place and might have been more obvious if it had “Closed” written on it…) or you ring the bell intermittently for ten minutes before someone appears.
Today, there were only two people ahead of me, but the woman being served seemed to be inquiring about a missing package that she had sent, rather than one she was picking up…and the post officer was telling her she had no way of knowing where the package was but that it said it had been delivered, the woman countered that nothing had been delivered and no notice or anything, etc etc – very standard post office conversation. Then the customer gets frustrated that the officer is washing her hands of the issue.
Customer: I am a CUSTOMER. You need to stop making excuses and saying that it’s the other person’s problem.
Officer: Ma’am, I can’t tell you where the package is. You have to ask the post office in the area where it was delivered.
Customer: You should have some way of looking that up! How is it that you don’t have an internal system that can tell you these things?
Man in front of me interrupts: What’s the zip code?
Customer: It’s in Queens! It’s (reads zip code)
Man: Every zip code has its own post office, so–
Customer: I know, but they should have a way of looking them up–
Man: I have Google. (starts to look for the delivery area post office)
Customer: THIS IS WHY THE US POST OFFICE IS DYING.
Man: Oh, there isn’t any service here.
Customer: (leaves in a huff)
Man: I got it! Oh, she left.
