I went to the Cen­tral Square post office today. I’ve been using the Ken­more Square office for so long that I had come to believe that mail­ing things was easy and fun. The postal work­ers at Ken­more are friendly and intel­li­gent and expe­di­tiously han­dle a steady stream of cus­tomers with neigh­borly professionalism.

Well, I for­got what sucks about Cen­tral Square. The postal work­ers weren’t exactly won­der­ful, but they were ade­quate. Of course I don’t expect them to match my out­wardly cheery, tire­lessly opti­mistic atti­tude. The prob­lem is the peo­ple who live in the area. The 10 cus­tomers in line before me prob­a­bly had a total com­bined IQ of 50.

Two guys in a row came up to the counter with pack­ages that were only par­tially sealed, and fum­bled fool­ishly with the tape pro­vided by the cashiers for exactly this kind of cus­tomer. Did they really expect to mail open packages?

One lady, who looked back and saw just how long the line was get­ting, went up to the counter to buy stamps. But not just any stamps would do. She wanted to exam­ine all the choices to see what would go well with her envelopes. Oh, per­haps that one? I like this one and this one, hmm, I won­der which I should get. I began to think of ways to afflict her with, among other things, my phi­lat­e­l­ical apa­thy. But before I could do any­thing irra­tional, she finally bought something.

Three more peo­ple looked as if they had never mailed any­thing in their lives. The postal work­ers must find this amus­ing. They talked at length about some­thing related to their pack­ages. Excuse me, would you just buy your fuck­ing postage?

I guess I have a com­plaint about the postal ser­vice too.

Finally, I got to the counter, man­aged to exchange the req­ui­site for­mal­i­ties, and expertly requested first-class postage.

“Does this pack­age con­tain any liq­uids, flam­ma­bles, or other haz­ardous mate­ri­als?” she inquired.

“Prob­a­bly. It’s almost cer­tainly haz­ardous if you eat it.”

“You mean no. Good. That will be $3.89. Good thing you’re send­ing this Pri­or­ity Mail—it will be there tomorrow!”

“Um, no offense, but the des­ti­na­tion address is in Har­vard Square. If it wasn’t there by tomor­row, where would it be? On an air­plane? Hey, wait a sec­ond, I said first class, not Pri­or­ity Mail.”

“Sorry, every­thing over 11 ounces has to be sent Pri­or­ity Mail now. This weighs 13.”

“That can’t be right.” When I was lit­tle, my rel­a­tives would send boxes of Christ­mas good­ies that were com­pletely cov­ered by first class stamps.

“It’s not just a rule. Look here, the com­puter doesn’t even give me a choice.”

“Well, then.”