*begin rant*
Time to vent some steam about the post office. Just when I think they're getting their act together, they go and trample on my good faith like a seven year old jumping up and down on a water bed while wearing daddy's golf spikes. What brings forth this angst? you may wonder. Well wonder no more, for I now will chronicle the ineptitude of the United States Postal Service.
It was a quiet day in February. Like most days, I checked the mail. To my surprise, there was a change of address form in the mailbox. Further was my surprise when I saw that the address to be changed was ours. Instead of living at 159 North Unit B (we live in the basement, and I felt weird calling it Apartment B, since there is no apartment A, and #B just jives wrong. Hence, I always called it Unit B), we were now to be 157 North. Now this was not a "notice of address change," nor did it bear resemble to anything official from the post office. It was the standard change of address form you use when you want your mail (hopefully, possibly) forwarded to a new address. There was no note of explanation, nothing even suggesting it came from anyone with any kind of actual say in the matter. We asked our landlord (the amazing Kurt Peterson) if he or his wife had put the form in our box. He said they had not, but mentioned that the town of Provo was changing all unit B's to individual numbers. However, he had just filled out the form with the town that day, and was surprised that we already had received the form. He said that we should just wait to hear from the post office about the matter. I heartily agreed. I mean, how many people would just blindly fill out the remaining fields of some half-completed change of address form they found randomly one day in their mailbox? My guess is few.
Life went on as usual. We stuck the form on our fridge (using magnets from www.kjmagnetics.com. Best magnets ever), and quickly forgot it. Several weeks later, Megan got a knock on the door. It was the postperson (the same one who never picks up our outgoing mail. I guess it's too hard to see or something. We always have to put it in our landlord's outgoing slot if we really want our mail to get picked up. Or chase him down the street, when he doesn't bother to check either.). He then proceeded to speak in a condescending manner concerning the aforementioned change of address form, asking things like "Couldn't you figure it out?" and saying things like "It's easy. Look I'll show you." You know, completely missing the fact that we hadn't received any kind of official info from them that our address needed to change. Megan asked why it had to be changed, and the postperson relayed some story about the police or something couldn't find an address that had a unit B in it. This is either a boldfaced lie, or a sad testimony to the incompetence of some people. It's not that hard people, especially considering that right now we don't have any kind of number on our house at all. Our landlord has the 159, but we have nothing. At least before, if you found the house and had a functioning brain stem, you could easily infer that Unit B meant "the basement." Now, genuine confusion could result (well, I see 159, and 149, but where's 157?), even for mildly intelligent individuals. I hope we don't require any emergency assistance any time soon. At least until we move. Or while we're moving. In fact, as long as it's not while I'm at home.
But I digress. In the end we filled out the form and placed it in our own outgoing box (if they want it, then they're going to have to do their job correctly at least once). After a few days, it was gone. However, I wasn't about to go and change all of our credit cards, bank accounts, etc etc, since we're moving to Louisiana in August. It just wouldn't be worth the hassle, since we're going to do it all over again in a few months. Since we still lived in the same physical place, and we filled out the change of address form, our mail would still get here. And it did. Until today.
Earlier this week, I ordered a surprise for Megan from Amazon (I'll refrain from posting the contents of this surprise, as it is still a surprise. Sadly, though, it should no longer be...). Everything was hunky dory, until I checked the tracking number again today (I was expecting delivery today or Monday) only to find the following unfortunate words: "Your item was undeliverable as addressed at 8:45 AM on May 17, 2008 in PROVO, UT 84606. It is being returned if appropriate information is available." Why? Only the USPS gods could possibly know. And of course it is Saturday, and I didn't find this out until late in the afternoon, so of course no one was at the office to figure out what's up. The package clearly made it to the local post office this morning, then was almost immediately deemed undeliverable, when they KNOW where we live, we have duly forwarded (as per their instructions) our mail, and it requires no extra effort than it would have had we had the "correct" address on the package to just deliver the thing here. And why would they make the silly decision to return the package to its sender? The whole thing boggles the mind. I would like to return with good news on Monday, but my faith has been shattered, and to hope for a positive outcome is more than I can do at this point.
*end rant*
In some better news, I found a nice place to paintball today.
No comments:
Post a Comment