When I started typing up this post, I did so before the events actually happened. It was going to be a brilliant piece about the post office and long lines and screaming babies and that sort of thing, but it didn’t really work out that way. Here’s how it started:
Today I had the unfortunate job of having to mail a package. Normally this job would not be an unfortunate one. I enjoy mailing packages, marvelling that for $3.85 you can send a package to someone 3000 miles away in two or three days. It’s hard to find a cup of coffee for that price these days, and it only has to travel ten feet.
The reason why today’s job was unfortunate was the time of year. It’s Christmas mailing season, and that means long lines at the post office. Our downtown post office normally opens at 12:30 on Saturdays but has extended hours for most of December. Today I reconned before taking my package, swinging by on my way to the grocery store to pick up some oatmeal and brown sugar. I walked through the post office at 10:35, and there was already a line four deep. When I walked past on my way back home, there were at least fifteen people in the line. And the post office wasn’t to open until 11!
I didn’t have much of a choice. My only other option was the airport post office, but that’s on the other side of town. The downtown post office is a short 5-minute walk from my house.
So I waited. And I waited. I got in the line at and left the post office at . It’s not that the post office is a bad place. It’s actually quite nice. It’s outside, you get to enjoy the nice weather and choke down the vog, you get to look at the FBI wanted posters of people, you get to read all the informative messages the post office likes to put up. Did you know it’s illegal to send illegal drugs through the mail? Who would have thought!
That’s how much I wrote before I actually went to the post office. Most of it is true, except for the bit about how long I waited and how it was an unfortunate job. See how there aren’t any times in that last paragraph? I was going to fill them in once I finally made it home sometime around 6 in the evening.
It didn’t quite work out that way. In reality I got to the post office at 11:44. Amazingly there was only one other person in the queue, and I made it out at 11:48. So much for long lines and screaming babies. There wasn’t even a baby in sight! It turned out to be a rather pleasant job after all, and the only unfortunate bit came when I had to pay.
I did get to look at the FBI wanted posters for a couple of minutes, though. One thing I don’t understand, and maybe some of my American readers can shed some light, is why do they put fingerprints on them? If I see one of these guys on the street, am I going to somehow Gil Grissom them into leaving some prints on a glass so I can go back to my lab and compare those fingerprints with the ones on the poster for confirmation? Or maybe if I get a good look at his hand I can say, “Hey, he’s got a whorled pattern on his left thumb, just like that guy in the poster!”
#1 by Geof F. Morris on December 17th, 2005
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I have no idea why they’d put fingerprints on the posters [unless they distribute these to local police and don't differentiate with what they put in USPS locations; if so, it's easy to see why they might give the local PD the prints], but … the line at my post office was so long that I just left today. [I had to get my mail; I was out of town last weekend, and my box here filled up. :sigh:]