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.
1 comment:
Xie, I mailed a package to a family in Brazil that was accepted by the local post office but sent back to me because I had filled filled out the wrong customs form!
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