Veteran's Day Eve At the Post Office

Busy day at the post office, partly because tomorrow is Veteran's Day.  Some people actually knew the post office would be closed tomorrow, and were mailing early.  Many of these people (at least twenty) still asked if we would be open tomorrow, Veteran's Day, notwithstanding.  I gleefully told them we would be closed.

Some people (at least six) had come to the post office expecting it to be closed.  I know this because they said things like, "I thought you would be closed today," as they handed me items to mail.  After the first two, I stopped replying, "but here you are anyway..." Of course these people thought today was Veteran's Day, because all of our holidays have been converted to Mondays and Fridays to give us three day weekends. Several people, all apparently under thirty, expressed indignation at the notion of a non-Monday holiday when places like the post office would be closed, because really, what good is that?  

The onslaught of cool weather in the rest of the country has brought back many of our "snow-birds" who are still adjusting to life  in the desert.  They still seem a little bewildered-- maybe because they only need a light sweater when they go out in the morning and they are already hot by noon, when the temperatures are in the low eighties.  Year-round residents comment about how beautiful and "crisp" the weather is, how we've been waiting for it.  Snowbirds ask when it will cool off.  

It is the bewildered snow birds who were out in force today, asking about why the mail cost so much, and misinterpreting the meaning of "flat rate box."  The advertising wizards working for the US Postal Service have definitely scored with their message that there is a cheaper way to send mail anywhere in the U.S., but they have somehow failed to convey that "cheaper" isn't actually cheap-- cheap, meaning free.  "What about those ifitfitsitships boxes?  What about those?  I thought they were free."  Yeah. The boxes are free.  I'll give you the box... but they still cost something to mail when you pack them full of stuff and want to send them across the country.  

These are the same people who say things like, "No wonder the Post Office is losing money.  These prices are crazy."  This was from a woman buying a stamp.  Forty-nine cents, Oy!  She remembers last year, when they were thirty-nine... (They were forty six cents until this January.)

It was a stamp purchaser who won the prize today too. After asking for a book of stamps, and being asked which book of stamps she wanted, she said "The forever ones."  

"All of those are the forever ones, we have about twenty different kinds,"  I said, I thought I was being  helpful.  

"I want Liberty Bells."  I explained that those have not been available for a couple of years.  

"I need forty of them," she added. 

"No liberty bells, how about forty flags, or birds, or Santas?"

Heavy sigh.  "I really liked those liberty bells.  Just give me forty of anything." I pulled out two books of the flags.

"No, not those," she said.  I switched the flags for birds.  "Okay, but I need forty of them."

"This is forty, twenty on each sheet, eight on the front and twelve on the back." I pointed to each stamp to make it clear. 

This image is from here.
  It shows how the stamps in question appear on the sheet.

She took them reluctantly and proceeded to count them. "I need forty." She counted the first sheet. Twenty. Okay.
Then she counted the second, identical, sheet.  Twenty, she reluctantly conceded.

The line had built up behind her, but I couldn't help asking, "You didn't believe me, did you?" as she handed me her debit card.  
"It never hurts to check," she said sharply.  

To all the Veterans from all of us who owe them so much, a big thank you!  And not just for the chance to spend a day away from work...

Conversation with an Actual Voter... Kinda

I was so wrapped up in boasting about my own voting yesterday, that I forgot to mention something election-related that happened at the bike shop post office this week.

On Monday, the day before election day, a fit, mussed, fortyish looking guy, wearing a plain white undershirt and a pair of blue pajama bottoms-- flannel, large plaid-- came up to the desk waving the yellow envelope that held his early ballot.  He wanted to drop it in the mail.  Not so unusual, people had been dropping them off for a couple of weeks. 

But, since the deadline for mailing the early ballots had fallen on the previous Thursday, I thought I would be helpful and let pajama guy know that, for his ballot to count, he would need to drop it off at a polling place. He was not the first citizen to have missed or simply ignored the deadline printed in red capital letters on the envelope.  I had already let a couple of people know they would have to drop their ballots off in person. They had thanked me.

"Where is one by here?" he asked, giving me the impression that maybe he didn't know what a polling place was. 

"At the high school gym, over on 82nd, or the middle school, off Granite Reef," I answered.  He still looked a little mystified about the fact that his ballot couldn't just be dropped off in the mail slot.  He looked annoyed that I had stopped him, actually.  He just wanted to drop off the ballot and be done.

He took a big breath, and sighed, and said, "OK, I guess I can go by there now." 

"No," I said, "there's no voting today, so you have to wait until tomorrow." 

"Why?" 
Seriously, he asked me why he had to wait for Election Day for the polls to be open.

"They only have one Election Day, so no one's there for that now," I explained. 

"I can't just drop it off there? Won't they take it?" He was really annoyed now, wishing he'd never come in.  He could have dropped the yellow envelope into the mailbox in the parking lot and avoided this confrontational woman trying to keep him from voting...

"There's only voting on Election Day," I repeated, as though that would clarify things.  

"They only do it one day?" He looked disgusted, really miffed, as though something about having only one day to vote was deeply unfair.

"Yeah," I said, and because I couldn't help myself, I added, "that's why they call it Election Day." 

I don't think I was dripping sarcasm, exuding it maybe, but not dripping, for sure.  

He turned and shuffled away in his slippers, shaking his head about the stupidity of it all.  

I know now, from the results of the election, that he probably did get to have his vote counted.  

From the ice cream mogul my state has elected as the next governor to the evasively inarticulate gal we've selected to be our state superintendent of schools, to the prison lobbyist who will be serving as attorney general, the results are pretty disappointing from where I sit.  The current governor, Jan Brewer, beamed and fluttered her false eyelashes on every local newscast as the election returns came in last night.  The gal who rose to national  fame thanks to the viral image in which she popped her gum and wagged her finger in the face of the President, is apparently happy about the prospect of a slate of state officials who will ensure that Arizona will never escape her legacy of governmental buffoonery. 

On the upside, my town finally voted for a budget override that will put some money back into education. I'm going to take that as a victory, and try to ignore the rest for the next few years...

Full disclosure:  I confess to a nagging sense of judgement about the whole early voting thing.  I get absentee ballots-- you're out of the country, the state, what have you, you don't want to be disenfranchised-- but early voting when you're right here in town?  You can't take a couple of minutes to go to the polls on the same day as everyone else?  I'm sure there are good reasons for sending in an early ballot, so I know my judgey attitude is illogical, but still, come on, really?

The Cake from Eileen

Today, both the girls have the sniffles.  Nothing serious, just a Spring cold, I think.  Annoying, but not catastrophic.  I would have had them stay home, as it is an early release day, so school lets out just after noon.  I couldn't though, because while they're at school, I'm going to nip over to the dentist's office and have a tooth pulled.  It's a broken, cavity-ridden tooth that's been giving me trouble since the end of last year, but I have been babying it, because doing something about it costs money.  Last week, when my jaw started to ache as if someone had punched me, I figured I couldn't wait any more, and sure enough, I was put on some antibiotics for the raging gum infection below the bad tooth, and told to come back this week for the extraction.  It should be a fun way to spend an hour before I need to pick the girls up, and then I plan to spend the afternoon sitting on the couch and letting all of us watch something I don't usually allow, like a binge-watch of Wizards of Waverly Place or the umpteenth showing of Frozen since Easter, when the girls were gifted with the DVD.

That's today: cranky, sickish kids, tooth pain, and the possibility of several spontaneous interpretive dances to "Let it Go."  I know, you wish you were me.

 Yesterday, however, someone gave me a cake.

If you want to make yourself a chocolate bundt,
this recipe  looks like a great one. 

I was working at the tiny post office inside the strip mall bike shop, and Eileen, one of my regular customers stopped in to buy some stamps.  I had some time to chat because traffic in the post office has recently declined pretty sharply owing to a combination of factors.   For one thing, the Easter and Mother's Day rushes are over, and then, of course, a half of the regulars are what we real Arizonans call "snowbirds" or "winter visitors" (what the state lawmakers call "tourism dollars") who have now gone back to wherever they live when they are not escaping a hundred feet of snow in their own backyard. They've already created their own little postal rush here, sending boxes back home, trying to calculate when to send them so they get there before the boxes, but don't have to wait too long to get them.  The grand kids do not want to wait around for that Cactus candy they were promised...

Also,  tax season has ended, so we don't have people waiting in line to mail their tax returns certified, with return receipt, so there's no chance that the bastar-- er, government-- will lose the the filing this year.  Honestly, I have heard enough horror stories about people's tax returns to think that there must be monkeys working in the mail rooms at all of the IRS facilities in the country.  Not the cute circus-trained monkeys with the little fez-style hats either, but crazy monkeys who treat precious envelopes like they were so many banana peels to be flung about for sport before they are hidden or discarded.  (I apologize now to everyone who thinks I am unfairly stereotyping monkeys, or, for that matter government employees.) But I digress... 

Picture from here

The customers still coming in are stalwart Arizonans who hang here during the months when the temperatures rival those on the surface of Mercury. (I know, I'm exaggerating, but really, we are closing in on the beginning of the 100 days over 100 degrees and I am not looking forward to that...) They are chatty elders who remember when a first class stamp was ten cents, guys who work in the hardware store and pharmacy here in the shopping center, and parents of kids who go to school with the girls. These are people from the neighborhood, who like to chat while I get them stamps or put postage on their packages.  One of these is this lady Eileen, who often mails birthday and anniversary cards to nieces and nephews across the country. She is always up for a joke, and sometimes tells stories about her thirty years as a stewardess-- because she started when they were proudly called stewardesses, when that was the way for an adventurous single girl like herself to travel the world.  She flew international flights out of New York for years, but she grew up here in Scottsdale, back when it was a little pueblo surrounded by the undeveloped, cactus-filled desert.  Her eyes still have that twinkle that must have charmed plenty of pilots and world travelers back in the day... not that I've heard many of those kinds of stories.  Eileen is a fun gal, but she is definitely a lady

She lives in our neighborhood, so I sometimes run into her at the library, or the pharmacy or, most recently, the grocery store.  The girls and I were trying to decide which of the on-sale Popsicles were the perfect compliment for a pizza dinner, when Eileen came around the corner with her cart, heading for the Lean Cuisine.  "Are these your beautiful daughters?  They are?  Oh my gosh, could you just die? So cute.  One sweet blondie and one stunning brunette. Aren't they just wonderful?"  

"Thank you," I said, mumbling something about how they "have their moments," and we talked for a minute about the weather and a movie she just saw and then we decided on Popsicles and moved on.  

The next day was my birthday, and the day after that I was working when she came in to buy some stamps.  She likes the ones that say CELEBRATE!  for birthdays and graduations, and we got to talking about Mother's day, and she mentioned my beautiful children, and she talked about her mom, who passed ten years ago, and she misted up a little, then said it was her birthday the next day, and I said that must be why we get along so well, our birthdays are so close.  By then, I had a couple of other customers, so she waved bye and we wished each other happy birthdays again.  

Twenty minutes later, she was back with a chocolate bundt cake from the grocery store, and she had festooned the plastic dome the cake came in with pink and purple ribbons.  She sang Happy Birthday and told the customers that I was helping that I was wonderful and had wonderful children.  And she misted up a little, again, and so did I,  I mean, she brought me a cake, and she barely knows me.  "Share it with those beautiful daughters," she said, "and tell them it's from the lady they met buying Popsicles."  

And I did.  And we had cake for breakfast today too, because when you have the sniffles and you still have to go to school, even for a half-day, or you are getting your infected tooth pulled, and having to pay to have that pain inflicted, you should eat cake for breakfast.  I'm going to tell Eileen next time I see her.  I think she will approve.

If we keep this up, I may have to get this,
from here, to hang up as our motto.

Note:  I actually started this post the day I had the tooth pulled, but couldn't get back to it until today.  Good news is the girls are better, and my jaw doesn't ache anymore, but sadly, I have the sniffles now and we are out of cake....

My Job, the TV Show

I know I alluded to my new job in my last post, and since I'm here, you know, "working," as I write this now, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about it.  But because the job is actually rather mundane, and some days, offers me lots of free mental time and space, I've begun to think of it as something with real possibilities-- at least in my own mind. Today is one of the slower days, so I have already obsessively checked my e-mail, Facebook and Etsy pages, played several rounds of Words with Friends, and destroyed countless gems in another mindless game.  It's almost noon. If I eat my lunch now, I will have nothing to get me through the eternal two to three o'clock hour which somehow stretches longer than any other in a 9 to 5 day.  Normally, I would say that 4 to 5 is the longest work hour, but I work in a little post office which closes at five so, that last hour is full of people rushing in to make sure their mail goes out before I do. Compared to the rest of the day, it often flies by.  

Picture from here 

The post office is a contracted sub-station inside a bicycle shop next to a supermarket about a block from my house.  Right there, I think we have the makings of a zany workplace sitcom of the sort that has not existed since the heyday of late 1970's-early 1980's television.  I'm thinking of something like Taxi here, but with bikes instead of cabs.  I see myself as an over-educated, under-employed (sarcastic, but humble) clerk reacting to the people who work here and the people who come in to mail things. 

There is the owner of the bike shop, a cute as a button, yet tough as nails, Canadienne who has recently purchased the bike shop from the man she used to work for.  She is a human Energizer bunny, the heart and soul of the place, darting here and bustling there, painting, tiling, wielding a wrench, assessing the damage to bikes brought in to be fixed, ordering, accounting, you know, doing everything it takes to run a bike shop. ( Maybe there's a multi-episode arc in here somewhere about how she falls for a customer who brings in a badly damaged sprocket... something to think about.)  She employs two mechanics, who are utter physical opposites (you know, one tall and thin, one shorter and round, like a perfect pair of Disney sidekicks) who are each good with the bikes and good for some snappy commentary and smart remarks as they shake a wrench at the sky, muttering about how awesome bikes are wasted on people who can't figure out how to shift the gears properly.   There is one more clerk/mechanic who works part time in the store and part time as a personal trainer.  He is a heart-of-gold used-car salesman of a man who has never met anyone with whom he could not strike up an enjoyable 45 minute conversation.  Oh, and I share the job with a woman named Lou, a postal sub-station veteran, though we work opposite days, so after the pilot episode, where she shows me the ropes (certainly replete with goofy postage mishaps) she would only drop in for "very special episodes."

Image from here

The customers fall into two main categories, though there are outliers all over lot.  The first group, which won't surprise anyone I'm sure, is the oldsters. The post office seems to be a magnet for everyone in my neighborhood over the age of 70. There are quite a few packages going to far flung relatives, especially grandchildren, and the chance to mail a package is also a chance to reminisce about when the mail didn't cost an arm and a leg. These people remember when a first class stamp could get a nice fat letter half way around the world. Good talk!  Good times!  

Usually, though, with just a single piece of mail in hand, a nattily dressed man or thoroughly coiffed woman walks slowly, very slowly, through the entire bike shop, sometimes with the aid of a cane or a home health worker and either a) asks me to make sure they don't need more than one stamp--"It felt a little heavy dear, just check, I don't want the phone company to return it and shut off my.... Oy my phone," or b) hobbles an extra four feet past me and my outstretched hand to forcefully shove their envelope through the after hours mail slot in the door next to the post office counter.  Just to mix it up, I sometimes get both with one customer, who asks me to weigh the letter, then grabs it from me before I can drop it in the box so that they can forcefully shove it through the slot in the door.   I see this as an opportunity for lots of fun guest spots with sit-com stars of bygone days to add a self-referential pop culture twist.  Or maybe someone like Betty White or Doris Roberts could appear every other episode or so, and pull the "weigh the envelope and grab it out of my hand" bit to peals of pre-recorded laughter.  

Children, also, don't seem to think some thing's been mailed unless they get to push it through a slot, but I don't want any pesky child stars gifted with an unexpectedly popular catch-phrase like "Did I do that?" or "Whatchyou talkin' about Willis?" to draw attention from the ensemble feeling of the show.

Picture from here

The other main category of customers is the growing group of Internet entrepreneurs  selling "handmade," "vintage,"and "found"  items on e-bay and Etsy.  They either bring in bushel baskets full of pre-paid packages and dump them unceremoniously all over the tiny counter, or try to bargain with me about postage for individual parcels, as in: "If I take this to the Main post office, this will be less, for sure, so what can you do for me?" or "You don't have to charge me extra for a tracking number, I come in here all the time..."  They like to disregard the fact that postage costs are set as federal rates and cannot be tampered with, even for the small business owner.  As a group, they are more assorted but less colorful than the oldsters, though their stories could bring the elements of sweet pathos that a successful show must have to go the distance.  And their creative recycling of packing elements and duct-style tape is always good for a visual joke. 

Another way this could go of course, is gritty (sub)urban drama. By taking a little license with the neighborhood I live in and moving it South and West about 10 miles, we have a whole new cast of characters with heart-wrenching stories-- purloined letters, snarled bicycle chain, a West Side Story-ish crossed stars romance:  "Baby, I told you not hang out with that boy from the bike shop!"   

But that's something for me to write on another shift....

*To be clear, I have lots of nice customers and good people to work with-- no disrespect meant to anyone here, of course.  I am thankful to have a job.

**Just another note-- I always try to carefully link credits to the random images I include.  If I make an error, I apologize to the original poster of the images.