Zen Grouch

When I still lived in Ohio, the small town post offices were like something out of the past, where they’d give you reliable and friendly service.

Yeah, *reliable and friendly service* just another thing that ain’t here no more!  Sure, there are people offering services that’ll smile in your face, then fuck you up the whazoo when it comes to getting what you paid for.  Except maybe for crack whores, and the buck naked women down at “GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS!,” who really give it their all, so that you’ll slap down a buck on the stage.

But when you take the combination of, the U.S. Government, and people who are suppose to offer the average citizen a service, you got yourself people who would be on welfare if they weren’t working in the post office.  THEN to make matters worse, they make so much money working for the “Gob’ment” they feel they’re too good to deal with the public.  They’re like the pretty little pissy bitches too good to work at Burger Fucking King, but they’re still there giving you attitude and either 50 packs of ketchup or none at all, nothing in between.

Hell! The bums downtown that spit bloody lung cancer induced flem on your windshield and smear it around with an old newspaper are more service oriented than your average McDonald’s *associate* or post office worker!

BTW, anytime you ask someone what they do for a living and they, all secret like, say they work for the Federal Gob’ment, they’re the ones out there, putting your mail in the wrong box for shits n’ giggles.

I was working in Cleveland some years back, when I made the mistake of going to an actual Cleveland post office to mail some stuff for work.  What a fucking mistake that was.  First off, everyone was giving me that “What the fuck you doing here white boy!” look, including the huge buck working the counter…

Now normally, I don’t approach the counter until the person standing there says something like, “Can I help you?,” “Next?” or maybe, “WAKE UP MOTHERFUCKER!”

I learned that move after making the huge mistake of assuming that a person standing behind the counter, wasn’t about to go on break, or make a phone call.  Yeppers, you can walk right up there to the counter as bold as love, and they’ll have you stand there while they’re doing whatever it is they’re doing, for the appropriate amount of time that it takes to punish you, depending on their always shitty mood, before they grace you by acknowledging your presence, and wave you away with the Queenly “begone” motion of the down turned hand, while they’re on their cell phone.

As this happens, you’re not really pissed, more like perplexed, as you’re developing all kinds of negative mental images, and wondering, “How exactly in the fuck can *anybody* wipe their ass after taking a dump, with fingernails that freaking long?”

Either she has an intern to do the job, like the poor fuck apprentices working in Sumo stables that have to wipe the big hog’s butts, or the Post Office installed bidets in all of the employee restrooms.

So, this huge angry looking, about to go *Postal on Whitie* Gob’ment worker in Cleveland, wasn’t saying shit after he waited on his last customer who walked away, leaving a perfect void in front of his counter.  He just stared me down, and I stared back waiting for any signs of human communication indicating that I was indeed next in line to be served!

He finally gave me a look with a Cocker Spaniel twist in his head (well… a rabid Cocker Spaniel), as if to mentally telepath to me, “Wellllll, I’m waiting…” to which I responded by walking up to his counter and placing a package on it.

He said nothing, staring at me, I said nothing staring at him and the package.

He finally queried, “You want to mail this or what?”

I responded, “OK, If I weren’t here to mail this package, what would be my options?”

Now this angry fuck is getting ready to climb over the counter, but stops himself and asks, “You getting smart with me boy?”

I said, “You asked if I wanted to mail THIS package, “or what” I was just wondering what the “or what” was.  What do you do with parcels that are addressed that people place on THIS counter, other than mail ‘em?!”

Granted I was having a bad day, and suddenly realized that it was about to get a whole lot worse if I didn’t cool my jets a bit, and said, “Sorry, I’d like to mail this package, first class please.”

Currently I’m living in California, where there are enough Asians so that they’re the local post office’s minority of choice.  But they keep ‘em off the street, from making actual deliveries, maybe because… generally speaking… they can’t drive for shit.

But they can look at numbers without getting them all dyslexiaed up, much unlike my normal mailman, mail person, Postal-American or whatever they want to be called.

I’m constantly giving mail that ends up in my box to the neighbors it’s intended for.  By that token, I’d expect that they’d return the favor, but no.  Much of my mail is in the wind.  Especially anything from the DMV, that might be useful in the fake ID trade.

The wife never received her new driver’s license, she had to go into the DMV and be tested for, a few months back.  THEN, she had to go back in, wait in line AGAIN and had to pay for another license!  Like it’s HER fault someone in the post office is stealing driver’s licenses to sell on Olvera Street next to the bootleg DVDs, Rolex watches and penicillin!

Just a fucking well orchestrated gang bang by the bankrupt state of “Where’s my tax refund god damn it?” California and the USPO!

Then when I inquired about making a formal complaint to the Post Office, they were all sympathetic, and told me they would put a “trace” on my mail.

I politely asked, “A “trace”… OK… What exactly does that entail?”

The very kind person, hadn’t a clue, but assured me that any problems would be solved, “Thank you very much and NEXT!”

But I’m a huge ass hole trouble maker for refusing to move along, and ask how they’re gonna “trace” my mail and fix all my postal problems if they don’t know my ADDRESS?!

***NEXT!!!***

Yeah, but at least when you hear a whore yelling out that wonderful word “NEXT” that’s so full of hope for the future, at least you know you’re really gonna get fucking serviced!

FUCK THE POST OFFICE!

The entire system should be privatized, if they can’t do their jobs at a reasonable cost.

OK, “Reasonable Cost” so, I’m at the post office today to mail in a couple rebate forms to Nero.

You probably know how the rebates work.  They usually give you a form that’s so small you need special watchmaker optics to fill the thing out, then if it’s unreadable, and they probably hire the blind to read the things, it’s rejected.

If it gets lost in the mail, bam, rejected.

They don’t like the ‘rebate’ sales receipt Frys gave you for the puropse of getting the god damned rebate! No they want a copy of the original receipt, and YOU’RE OUTTA THERE!

Last problem I had was that Frys gave out two separate $10 rebates, for a total of $20 in rebates.  It’s right there in their ad for crying out loud!

“Sorry bitch” only one rebate per customer!

The the icing on the cake for that $20 rebate for SmithMicro’s AquaZone, is that they told me the check for $10 was in the mail.  But I never received the mother fucker.  So, I contacted them until their response is, sorry dude that’s an old one, no record, try again.  Fuck that noise.  That’s another topic…

So, anyway, I’m standing in line for 20 minutes, at one of the P.O.s main distribution centers, that unfortunately, might get closed down due to budget cuts.  Fine, they’ll get transferred, or retire to Tahiti.

But when I try and get a delivery confirmation on the two rebate envelopes to Nero, this bitch is telling me that I got to send the things express mail at close to six bucks a pop.

I tell her that in the past it’s only cost me about 3 bucks to get delivery confirmation.

She says, “Oh, that’s certified mail…”

I say, “But you just said I’d HAVE to send it express?!  My mistake, when I said I wanted a delivery confirmation, I should have specified, delivery confirmation, but NOT the most expensive way to do it!”

She gave me the forms that you can fill out with whatever you want since they are yours, and you can write down Nero-1 and Nero-2 and that should be enough.

But thinking I’d write about as fast as it takes her to hold a phone conversation while on the counter, she had me step aside, to take the 5 seconds it took to fill out the delivery confirmation forms, so I could track ‘em online.

Knowing that my rebate forms were about 10 minutes away from getting *accidentally* shredded, I took my shit and went to the smaller branch closer to home, and was in and out in 3 minutes, with the cheapest method of shipping suggested right off the bat.

So, what in the holy fuck!  I know they aren’t being paid on a commission, so why did this fucking bitch want to charge me twice what it should have been, just so that I could avoid one of the pitfalls of mailing in a mother fucking rebate form?!