Normally the post office puts out a friendly advisory every Christmas season telling us to hurry on down and mail our packages so we can avoid the Christmas rush. Then it provides a list of suggested mailing deadlines - most of which fall in early to mid-December. This, of course, implies one is actually able to get to the post office window sometime before New Year's Day. Patrons of the my local branch of the U.S. Postal Service aren't taking that for granted.
Nope, those who frequent my post office will spend much of the holiday mailing season standing in a line evocative of a Stars Wars opening, only without a lot of people dressed like Yoda.
It didn't used to be
like that, but apparently someone decided to cut corners and instead of getting rid of the guys at the top who make more money than the President, they had the bright idea to shorten the hours and reduce the number of
people working there. One fellow was transferred and that leaves the one, sole clerk to wait on the 6,789 people who stop by every day to spend money with them.
My last visit was on a typical weekday. The line
wound completely around the lobby once and was getting ready to double. If someone had hummed a Gloria Estefan song, we could have had a conga line.
But I had better things to do that day so I left, then
returned later that afternoon for a second try. I opened the door and, lo and behold, there were about 10 people standing in line and I decided to chance it. After all, how long can it take to wait on 10 people? The
answer - from here to eternity because, you see, the 10 people were only the ones who were visible - the line really stretched around the corner.
Once I was in, though, I was in, so I took my place at the back of the
line. Naturally, there was a woman at the front paying every bill she'd ever had by postal money order and the person behind her had about 312 packages, most of which needed insurance and custom forms, so we settled in
for a good long wait.
And a funny thing happened - after a while we all became good friends. We started pulling out pictures of our kids and trading funny stories, watching the faces of postal customers as they
opened the door to find enough people squeezed inside to fill a football stadium. We had inside jokes, swapped pie recipes, fought and made up - we were family.
Eventually I managed to fight my way through the
cobwebs and made it to the front of the line to mail my package. I felt strangely sad when the time came to depart - it was as though I was leaving home for the first time. I guess the group hugs and all those choruses
of "Kumbaya" really allowed us to bond as postal customers. And I can hardly wait until the Christmas season, when we'll all be together again.
I must remember to pack my sleeping bag and harmonica.
