So: today I had to go to the post office. The proper downtown post office. And because I love to learn, I came away from the experience with a few rules.
Rule #1
Going to the downtown post office is a terrible idea. Never go to the main post office. The clerks at the main post office are werewolves, and they hate you. They want to destroy you. Consequently, the clerks at the main post office will always figure out the slowest and most expensive way to send your mail. Yesterday, for example, I had two small padded envelopes to mail, and because these envelopes were *slightly* thicker than the ones I normally use, the clerk gave me a price that was three times what I normally pay. We're talking less than a centimetre here. Maybe four or five millimetres. But she did that thing where she half-heartedly tries to fit it through the mail slot (who the fuck has a mail slot anymore, anyway? and what does this magical slot signify?) and it caught at the edges and all of a sudden it's a 'small packet', and it's three times what I normally pay. Uh, no, I said.
Rule #2
If you need to use the services of Canada Post, go to a postal counter -- the kind you find at the back of a drugstore (in Canada, that pretty much means Shoppers Drug Mart). But even here, you have to be careful, because some clerks at drugstore postal counters are part-time werewolves, and their efforts to destroy you are casual -- sometimes you'll get cooperation, sometimes you won't. If they bring out the tape measure, run.
I have a guy, at my favourite postal counter, and because he is *not* a werewolf I can almost always get my drawings and cigar-tin stories mailed for between $3 and $5 (again, using the right padded envelope), but by the time I got to him today the mail had already gone out, and my 'small packets' needed to reach their destination by Wednesday.
Rule #3
You have to ask. You have to ask the question at hand. So I asked the werewolf clerk at the main post office, Will these get to Ottawa by Wednesday?
Uh ..., she said.
Uh, no, I said.
Rule #4
Seek alternate solutions. So I ended up putting both 'small packets' inside an express-letter envelope. And the cost of this was a dollar more than sending one of them as regular 'small packets'. And they will get there by Monday. And how the fuck does any of *that* make sense?
Werewolves.
One of my younger brothers just mailed me a laptop computer. And it cost him $27. Whereas my 'small packets', which weighed about as much as an empty beer can, would have cost $9. Each. And how the fuck does *that* make sense?
Werewolves.
p.s. I'm making the draw for the fridge calendar this weekend. If you are not a werewolf, and care to keep track of time in a human, non-biting way, then leave a comment in the last post.
problem here is simply the empty beer can. always buy bottles.
ReplyDeleteheh.
I know the guy you're talking about. I like him too. At the Shopper's at Bagot and Princess, right?
ReplyDeleteJill: You're right! Funny how we all know the *one* helpful guy.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree... but I think all Canada post workers are werewolves. I actually dread having to go to the post office now.
ReplyDeleteIt's the post office, one big giant-clawed werewolf. The prices and how they are calculated are frighteningly unreasonable. How do you fight a werewolf??
ReplyDelete