For the love of all that people hold sacred (whatever that may be), why do people show up at the post office ill prepared?

Especially during the holidays when you fucking KNOW the place is going to be a zoo.

Why would you want to add to the general chaos and misery of the post office at any time, much less during the holiday season when we are all supposed to be full of good cheer and shit?

I, myself, had to venture forth to the post office last week.

I was not happy (nor surprised) that the line was out of the post office proper and into the lobby; but I accepted it as a fact of life.

But I was thoroughly appalled that the lady in front of me had two large packages – neither of which seemed to bear any address whatsoever!

And the lady at the front of the line had two bags of stuff and was busy with a craft project involving putting her boxes together, stuffing stuff from the bags into the boxes, taping them shut, cutting out the addresses (she had printed on non-adhesive paper) and taping those to the boxes.  At least she had brought her own scissors, tape and the aforementioned non-adhesive paper with the addresses.  She just kept waving people past her as postal employees called “next”. 

Nobody seemed to have any basic understanding of how the post office and the mail worked.

1.         You have something you want sent somewhere else. 

2.         You put that thing into an appropriate container (envelope, box, or mailing tube). 

3.         You put the address where you want that thing to be delivered onto the container.  Return addresses are appreciated too. 

4.         You take that addressed container to the post office, hand it to the appropriate postal employee and

5.         The postal employee will tell you how much it costs to get your container from here to there. 

6.         You give them the postal employee money and they apply the proper postage, and you go on your merry way and your container goes on its merry way.

Those are the basics.

If you are sending something to another country, you need customs forms.  If you want a return receipt or insurance, there is more paperwork.  These forms are available at the post office – where you can get them BEFORE you get to the postal service window. 

The postal service window is not your personal office space. 

Getting to the postal service window is not your signal to start filling out your paperwork or putting your shit into an envelope or box.  And it is certainly not the time when you should start figuring out where you want your envelope or box to end up.

WTF people?

Given the range of ages of the people I saw at the post office, I sincerely do not believe this was anybody’s first trip to the post office. 

I no longer wonder where the term going “postal” comes from.  I’m just surprised that it’s other postal employees getting shot at and not the *(*#$#)(@ customers.