It's in the mail

Following on my post about making candy for holiday presents, let me share with you an experience I’m decidedly not grateful for:

Dealing with the US Postal Service to mail nine packages, five to the UK.

I’d collected some flat-rate Priority Mail boxes from the Sunnyvale Fremont post office (where the guy behind the lobby window looked at me like I’d lost my mind when I asked for them), and had my nine boxes and envelopes in carry bags when I went to the Sunnyvale main station.

I even had Max Hastings’s All Hell Let Loose to read while in line. I figured the 450 pages I still had to go would keep me occupied while I waited.

Well, the adventure began when I pitched up at the counter and the woman informed me that I had the wrong boxes to send things to the UK, and also the wrong customs forms (which I’d filled out beforehand).

Now, I’ll be buggered if I can figure out exactly what the difference is between these two—except for a slight variation in size. But what the difference amounted to was about $20 per package. Plus redoing the customs form.

(Also, let me just say that if I ever come across the ass who designed those self-assembly boxes, I’m going to break all his fingers. You’re welcome.)

However—if all I did was wrap over the boxes, everything would be copacetic. Evidently it’s something to do with the pre-printed markings.

Although, as you understand—every damned one of them is official USPS kit, available for pickup without any explanation of appropriate use. And it made me wonder what the hell is the significance of all the boxes they print—and don’t explain to you until you hit the shipping counter.

I got a bit of a giggle out of her warning me that “You won’t get a tracking number” if I didn’t have…something, not sure what it was.

Because the USPS “tracking” system is pointless. I know for a fact—from multiple experiences as both a sender and recipient of packages they “track”—that their letter carriers often just dump parcels that won’t fit into mail boxes in public places like lobbies instead of hauling their lazy asses up to the actual office or residence. Once so dumped, they log them as “delivered”.

And once “delivered”, the USPS refuses all responsibility.

So, yeah—not worried about having your damned tracking number.

Well, so I went home and wrapped up the offending parcels. Then I took them to the Fremont station (again with All Hell Let Loose), where Mary actually gave me an injured look when she realize I had five packages to send to the UK. It was like I’d asked her to prove Fermat’s last theorem.

“It’s going to take time,” she intoned.

Whatever.

But—with Mary at the helm, it did indeed take time. Because she just couldn’t seem to grasp the whole notion of sending things outside the US. (And before you ask, Mary is not a twenty-something; she’s been around the block a few hundred times.)

She laboriously weighed each package (sighing with each), and painstakingly typed with two fingers something into a computer from the customs forms—are they now adding that sort of crap to the big data miasma? Every single one. She chided me for writing “confections”—what’s that? Candy? She scratched out “confections” and wrote in “candy”, apparently convinced that no one in either the USPS or Royal Mail would understand “confections”.

She also demanded, “How many?” How many what? Candy? What the hell does it matter? I made stuff up.

She was so concerned about that stuff she never once asked me whether my packages contained anything dangerous, flammable, alcohol, perfume, etc. I’d have thought that would have been more germane than how many candies were in each box. But I’d probably have to explain “germane” to her, if I brought it up.

The postage charged wasn’t what the woman at the main station had quoted—I’m guessing that you’d not get two workers across the USPS to come up with the same story.

In the 25 minutes or so I watched Mary go through her painful routine I got a bit of a laugh out of the worker at the next place on the counter—I swear, not one of the people who came to her got away without having to redo something. “You have the wrong form!” “Is this right?” “No!” She was the Queen of Denial, and boy, did she relish it.

Anyhow, eventually I paid a ridiculous amount of money and left. Mary was so dispirited she didn’t even ask if I wanted to buy anything else, which is the big USPS thing—they’re much more interested in upselling you than in doing the transaction you came there for.

One thing I’ll say for the Sunnyvale staff (at both locations) is they’re not as crabby as the Cupertino crowd. I swear—those people are the surliest humans outside a Dostoyevsky novella, even when they’re trying to get you to buy other stuff.

What I learned was that the USPS is still the bastion of the quintessential time-serving government worker, still giving the rest of the public sector a bad name for plodding, indifference and obstructionism. I suppose it’s good to know that there are some things that never change.