Going Postal

I had to go to the post office this morning to mail a package to my son who is across the country attending college — I use the word attending loosely, very loosely.  It’s March and temperatures in Pennsylvania have broken fifty degrees so he’s ready for shorts and t-shirts. That is, more shorts and t-shirts.  He has plenty of the loose-fitting athletic shorts and lacrosse emblazoned t-shirts that he loves so well in his dorm room, but it’s “way” easier for me to send clean ones from California than for him to do laundry in Pennsylvania.  I also sent a batch of his favorite cookies because he was feeling a little down.  He just spent his spring break on a bus traveling to three lacrosse games, two of which they lost.  Most of his friends, he informed me as he was sitting on the broken-down bus outside of Pittsburgh, were on a beach somewhere nice and warm.  (Warning: If you have really young children stop reading here — you don’t want this picture in your head.)  I was happy that he didn’t mention the barrels of beer they were drinking, the girls in little-of-nothing swimsuits whose flat, hard bellies they were lapping the lager from, the sunscreen they weren’t applying, and the sleep they weren’t getting. He is such a kind boy to spare me all of the details.

So, I get to the post office about ten minutes after they open and there’s no line.  There is also no attendant, so I ring the bell on the counter just like the sign says.  I wait.  Still no attendant.  I ring the bell again — just one little “ding”.  Eventually, the attendant comes sauntering from the back, brushing crumbs from his neatly trimmed goatee.  (Really, if he had been moving any slower he would have been going backwards.)  I’ve seen this guy before and I know he has an attitude, so I put a smile on my face, my package on the scale, and ask for a roll of stamps, followed by a very sincere, please.  As he hurls the roll of stamps at me I hear something totally unintelligible — it’s said in English (I think) but with a very heavy accent and with the speed, and no breaks of someone who:  a. has to repeat the phrase many times a day, and b.knows there is just about nothing they can do, short of shooting someone, that will make them loose their job.  I’m a little flummoxed.  I think he just asked me something about insurance and confirmation but I’m not really sure.  As I try to decipher what he’s just said (asked?) he snipes:  ”Just yes or no!”

“No,” I reply.  I’m not smiling anymore and please and thank you have just left my vocabulary.  I’m thinking about how I was up before the crack of dawn walking my dog because the poor guy had a tummy ache.  I don’t like it when my dog is not feeling well, I don’t like daylight savings time, and I don’t like paying this guy’s salary — especially since I’m one of only about half of all Californians that pay income tax — just to have him treat me like he’s doing me a favor.

Not all postal clerks are lazy and ill tempered.  Where I grew up the postmaster and assistant postmaster were veterans.  One had lost part of his leg, and the other part of his lung, in war, both spoke English beautifully, and they were happy to repeat things. They even smiled — imagine that!

During the health-care debate a friend tried to sell me on government-run health-care by using the post office as an example. He effused about the price of a stamp only costing forty-four cents.  Right.  If you factor in the billions of dollars taxpayers pay per year to keep the post office running the price of a stamp goes way up.  And don’t even get me started on a trip to the DMV, an even better model for inefficiency and rude behavior!

Where did we go wrong?  It was noble at one time to give wounded war veterans secure jobs, health benefits, and a pension. Just like teachers needed unions to protect them years ago because they weren’t being paid fairly — they were almost exclusively women and society thought their husbands would provide for them.

As a nation we have shifted from rewarding people for hard work to letting people get away with a grandiose sense of entitlement. People in the public sector shouldn’t be protected from losing their jobs, shielded by their unions and giving the greater public no recourse– it hasn’t made our country better, it’s made workers lazier.

And in the private sector we’ve been just as guilty, myself included.  Kids get a cellphone when they turn twelve, a car when they turn sixteen, everyone gets a trophy, and it’s not politically correct to keep score.  We send our kids off to expensive colleges (replete with spring break debauchery), don’t make them work to pay part of it, and then listen to them complain about having three classes IN A ROW with no time for getting food.

What have we become and how are we going to turn it around?

For a start, the next time I mail my son a package, I’m just sending cookies… and I’m sending them FedEx.