Scott’s Uni­ver­sal Truth #1: The best place to find the world’s most clue­less peo­ple is ahead of you in line at the post office.

I find it odd how many of the cus­tomers at the post office appear to have no expe­ri­ence with mail­ing things, or with life in gen­eral. Today, for example:

• “Oh, I need to write the address on ALL of these envelopes? Maybe I’ll just do that right here at the counter.”
• “Can you just wrap this up for me?”
• “I need to send this pack­age by FedEx.”
  “This is the post office. You’ll have to go to FedEx to do that.”
  “What!!!”

I know for a while postal employ­ees had a bad rep­u­ta­tion. I can hardly blame them. If I had to deal with such idi­otic cus­tomers all day I would be tempted to start shooting.

My expe­ri­ences with the US Postal Ser­vice have been mostly good. I am impressed by their con­tin­u­ous, silent improve­ments behind the scenes. For exam­ple, a first-class let­ter from Boston to Mon­terey, Cal­i­for­nia now arrives in 2-3 days. I guess they’re not dri­ving the scenic roads!