I don’t go to the Post Office very often. For the most part, if I need to mail something, I just put a stamp on it and drop it off at the mail room at work. Wendy takes care of sending our packages and she has some high-tech, on-line supply chain management thingy from her days as an eBabe.
Anyway, a week or so ago I found myself in line at the post office on Willow and Broadway. It’s one of those large distribution center post offices where the mail is sorted and big trucks come and go all night. And, it is open late. The windows are open until 7 pm. So, on a rainy Friday night we had some stuff that just required a visit to the post office. After an hour plus commute in the rain, I stopped by the house, picked up the packages and raced off to the post office, getting there just in time only moment before they locked the door.
Once inside the locked door, I had one of the most bizarre people watching experiences since we went to Disneyland a few weeks ago. I was so inspired by the weirdness of the experience that I started writing this article on my Blackberry while standing in line.
And, I had plenty of time to work on the article because there were about 20 people in line ahead of me and about three windows open. It seemed that each person in line had a more far-fetched problem than the person before so it took forever for them to work through the line. Also, it doesn’t help that the post office had installed some of that bullet-proof plexiglass (like they have at some banks) that is very difficult to hear through.
Before I describe all the people, I have to describe the score: there was a TV mounted up on the wall that looked like it normally plays some kind of promotional video or something. This night, though, the TV was picking up a very light signal of a Japanese Shogun-type soap opera. Even with my new Lasik corrected 20/20 vision, I couldn’t read the subtitles but I was oddly drawn to watching it in between watching the people in line.
So, now you have stuck with me for the paragraphs above, now the payoff: the people in line:
- The Extra Nice, Super Tall Biker Dude. This guy was odd in a number of ways. First, he was so tall, I had to look up at him. His long pony tail, which came down to his shoulder blades, was barely at eye level for me. Then, he was way too nice, engaging in pleasant conversation with just about everyone in line (including me…and you know how I like to talk to strangers) when, if he didn’t open his mouth, from the way he looked, you would have thought that he was trying to figure out how to kill the rest of us.
- The Craziest Problem. As far as I could tell, the craziest problem of the group of people in line was the woman who wanted to send 10 very large boxes to England. She, of course, could only carry one of the 10 boxes so she needed them to unlock the door for her and allow here to go back and forth in the rain to bring in the other 9. When the postal employee hesitated at the request, you would have thought that the survival of the human race was, itself, at stake if those boxes did not get in the mail to England on that night. Meanwhile, the rest of us in line were thinking (and the nice biker guy was saying out loud to one of his new friends), “Honey, if you need to mail 10 large boxes to England, don’t show up at the post office on a rainy night 10 minutes before the post office closes!” It was the only thing that the nice biker guy said that even approached a negative tone.
- The Frustrated Small Business Owner. This guy had one of the worst wigs I have ever seen and he had a whole box full of mail that all seemed to (a) require some special form or something and (b) cause him some sort of frustration which, due to the bullet-proof plexiglass, he had to explain to the post office employee loud enough for all of us to share in his pain.
- The Lost Elderly Man. This poor guy was almost to the front of the line when I got there. He waited his turn just to buy a pre-paid stamped envelope (which were available from the vending machines in the lobby) and then stood at one of the counters writing a letter in what looked like very large and hardly legible writing. I was in line for almost a half-hour and he was still there when I left.
- The Woman with Giant Glasses. For those of you who have been following the Boeing scandal involving a former Air Force employee, Darlene Druyun, you will know what I am talking about here. This woman was tiny and her glasses where as big as Darlene Druyun’s glasses, except that her head was about a fifth of the size. She was also a serial gum chewer and every time she chomped on her gum, her glasses would pop up and down. There were a couple of times when I wasn’t watching the Japanese soap opera on the fuzzy TV that I almost laughed out loud at her.
- Ralph. Finally, there was me. After listening, and making fun of all these people, I get to the front of the line and, yes, I have an international package and I hadn’t filled out the form. The postal employee gave me a short lecture about how I am supposed to fill out the form before I get in line and after appropriate apologies, she let me fill out the form while she worked on my other packages. I am sure that the people in line behind me were grabbing for their Blackberries (literally or figuratively) and clicking away about this tall white guy who spent his time watching a Japanese soap opera and laughing at all of the other people who forgot to fill out their forms only so he could make the same mistake when he got to the window.
There is a post-script to this story. As I was walking out of the locked-down area, a man and his son walked up to the guy whose job it is to keep the door to the service areas locked but let the people out who got there before it closed. There’s a big sign with the hours on the door and the postal employee obviously letting people out one at a time and locking the door behind them. In the face of all of this visual evidence, this guy asks the postal employee if he can go inside because he needs to buy a book of stamps…