It's in the mail again

I had one last package to send for the holidays, and I finally got it all suited up to mail on Friday. I went to the USPS Agnew Station in Santa Clara, figuring I’d try for something different from Sunnyvale.

Only it turns out that the US Postal Service basically trains all its customer-facing employees in techniques of idiocy, disdain and general unhelpfulness.

As with both Sunnyvale stations, there was quite a line; and as with every post office I’ve been to in the past several months (Los Altos, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara), they only had two windows open.

I had plenty of time to observe the three staffers (as one came up to serve passport applicants, another just closed her window and walked away) display the maximum of disinterest in their job and the public.

When I finally got up to the counter, the woman threw a hissy fit because my return address had only my street, number and zip code. “You have to have the city! And the state!” “The zip code incorporates not only the city and state, but a specific area within the city; that’s the definitive placer.” “You have to have the city and the state.”

(Which, BTW, I did not on any of the packages I’d mailed three days before. Maybe it’s a Santa Clara thing. Or maybe it’s just a “you have to have something wrong with this package” thing.)

Whatever.

But my packages are sent; they are in the hands of the shipping gods.

And next year I’m going UPS. Enough is freaking enough.