Return to Sender

I went by the post office today to mail off a resume. I had quite forgotten that it was tax day, so I was unprepared for the huge crush of people in the lobby. Resigning myself to waiting a while, I got to engage in that classic time-waster: people-watching.

I am constantly surprised at the number of older people that always seem befuddled by such new-fangled technology as credit card readers or automated vending machines. I always wonder if they’ve just been let out of whatever home they’ve been trapped in since the 50s. It’s not like we sprang all of this on them in one day. Surely they’ve run across these things at some point before in their lives.

Then there were the ladies that had chosen today to send out their mass mailing, and had a box full of postcards. Unsorted postcards. They couldn’t understand why the lady behind the counter wasn’t allowing them to get bulk rates, and insisted they should. It’s been about a year since I’ve done any mass mailings, and I still remember that the sorting requirement was the first item when you looked up bulk mail restrictions.

And as with any public gathering, particularly those at civil servant headquarters, there were those people that paced and muttered and gestured angrily because the line was crawling, then, when it was their turn, didn’t have everything ready to go.

At one point, a very tall redhead walked in. She had the kind of hair color that combines a deep orange with a burnished copper. You know, like someone spilled the bottle during the dye job. Anyway, she was wearing a brick-red jumpsuit-type thing and – just for one brief second – I wished I was a gay man. That way I could have told her that someone had lied to her when she got dressed this morning without the fear of getting slapped.

By this time, it was my turn to get to the counter. The postal worker seemed surprised that my envelope wasn’t addressed to a governmental agency. I commiserated with her about the extended hours she would be putting in today, paid for my stamp and left. I knew she’d get far more holidays than most office workers, so I didn’t feel too badly for her – though our mail carrier told me something surprising the other day. It seems that the post office is open for all religious holidays that fall during the weekdays, and only closes for secular ones.

And how was your day?