USPS

I live in a large city and go to my local post office almost every day to send Express Mail packets to clients. There's almost always a line and there are rarely more than 50% of the clerk stations manned (personed?). The slow-moving line gives me an opportunity to compare the post-office clients to the supposedly most dreadful clients snaking their collective way to a counter: the local DMV. The folks at my post office defeat the DMV folks hands down.

The post-office-line folks are sometimes scary and they've made me realize that most people don't have what my grandmother would have called "yankins up" had she not been an educated, articulate woman.

First, many of those in line look odd. They're poorly dressed in ugly, misfitting clothes. They're festooned with tattoos. Their oddly colored, pied hair is often dirty, tangled, and threatening.

Second, they seem to be oblivious to the sensibilities of those around them. Their kids usually race around unsupervised while they themselves talk loudly on their cell phones. A few play small radios from time to time--usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas for some reason.

Third, most of the folks waiting in line don't have a clue about what they want or need at the post office. People frequently want to send packages via "partial post" and I wonder if they don't really want the packages to arrive. Most, however, just don't know what services are offered by the USPS and they certainly don't know what those services provide.

It's embarrassing to see adults who are eligible to vote, who procreate far too often, and who drive poorly and park even more poorly, but who know nothing about the simple USPS. They willingly place themselves and their vital envelopes and packages in the hands of clerks for whom English is rarely their mother tongue.

Most of the clerks try to help a little--but just a little. The clerks' questions are usually poorly worded and usually misunderstood by postal patrons dazed by the unfamiliar questions. When it's finally determined, for example, that the letter should be sent certified rather than registered, the clerk's bureaucratic mentality takes over. S/he gives the forms, etc., to the patron who then laboriously fills things in at the counter while the clerk does absolutely nothing but wait for the completed forms. Meanwhile, those in line shift from left foot to right foot, waiting their turn to monopolize the clerk's time.

Thus is any progress delayed by the ignorance and stupidity of the postal patron and the laziness of the clerk who savors the respite. It does not seem to cross anyone's mind that the slow-writing postal patron should go away, fill in the forms, and then return, thereby giving another ignorant, stupid, lazy patron a chance to restart the cycle.

This is the government and these are the people. Efficiency takes hind teat. Common sense is out the window. Suggesting that someone be prepared to do business when they reach the counter would make them feel bad about themselves, so it's better to tolerate ignorance, stupidity, laziness, arrogance, inconsiderateness, and all the while have to listen to/suffer through all little dramas that have brought the postal patrons to be where they are now.

I have seen women try to address Christmas cards at the clerk's counter while chatting to the clerk about the bleak lives of the various addressees. I've seen clerks tape packages for patrons while patrons write the recipient a last-minute note to include in the package.

Although Huxley probably created his three lowest castes for Brave New World out of whole cloth, what had been mere fiction 75 years ago is now quite real.