US Postal Service ... worst in the world?

I mean, maybe the Congo is worse. Or Tajikistan. Maybe it's hard to mail a birthday card when there's dictators and warlords and death squads out to mess with you. And maybe there's some kind of postal hell where all you do all day long is carefully box and wrap and put sparkles on things that are precious to you and then negotiate with clerks who behave like menopausal nuns running a reform school for retarded werewolves and then you go home only to find these packages have come back to your mailbox as mangled, diseased and burning pieces of shit. But until I die and go to this place (yes, I know it's coming), the US Postal System will just have to do.

I once had a friend mail me a sweater. The clerk handed it to me in a plastic bag, like it was evidence of a crime. The original wrapping -- now shreds -- rustled around at the bottom of the bag. The sweater had tire tracks on it. How the fuck does that happen? I mean, my friend didn't mail it from the planet of the apes.

Now they've wrecked a painting of mine. Snapped in half the 1.5-inch thick frame/stretcher. I mean, that requires real effort. You have to crush it. And not just with your foot. You have to use something heavy -- like a car or a truck or a fucking airplane. Why do I have to be interrogated and fill out ten forms and re-address everything with that shitty blue pen they give you if they're just going to destroy it anyway? Can't we just skip the dance? I'll hand the clerk a twenty and she can slap me in the face with asbestos shingles. Done. And no six weeks of waiting!