The Post

I was going to title this entry "Going Postal" but I could not find it in myself to sink that low.

Normally, I don't mind going to the post office. The consumer demographic is interesting to observe*, the stamps are pretty to look at and I've never had an employer give me a hard time about coming back late from an errand when that errand is the post office.** I've never gotten bad directions from a mail carrier and the counter employees are cheerful and easygoing.

Except at the Squirrel Hill branch of the Pittsburgh post office. Conducting business there is an experience in aggravation akin to trying to navigate through Milan Malpensa airport.*** No amount of people watching can eliminate the bad taste of conducting business in this branch.

There exists a set of undefined, completely arbitrary and random rules as to how a customer is supposed to function while inside the confines of this particular office. The only order I have been able to determine is that if you are a middle aged, monied male you could get away with murdering all the patrons, piling their bodies into a pile and setting the corpses on fire and the staff would not blink an eye.

Or, in a less extreme example, bypass the line altogether, dump enormous package and bag of mail on the counter and demand a specific employee. Be sure to count off where your place in line would have been, if you were actually the type to participate in such a bourgeois custom. Manage to conveniently ignore the last woman in the line while counting, she must be invisible. Proceed to leave the lot in a pile on the counter in order to spend several moments banging on the heavy, wooden, "employee's only" door while yelling. Return to counter and hover over the postal employees, asserting

Be not young or female and step up to the empty station without first being called. You will be screamed at, then sent back to the line, where you watch while the screaming employee throws the packages from a prior customer into the waiting bin and storms off for a smoke.

Just as your turn comes, a third, yawning, employee will wander out, announce that she is tired but can't seem to nap and that she needs cash. Instead of going outside to the ATM across the street, she hands her debit card to her coworker, who swipes and hands her some bills.

I hate the place.

* Today there was an elderly man and a middle-aged woman holding the forms and various other paraphernalia necessary to obtain a passport. The elderly man was applying for his first passport. I wondered where he would be traveling. A son in the military? A cruise? A late-in-life desire to see the world? Or a casio junket to the Falls?
** I suspect that is a more a function of being successful at choosing more relaxed employers. My current boss, for example, happens to be a fan of packages and packing material, so he has a tendency to overlook long absences in the middle of the day when the employee in question has business to conduct at the neighborhood post office.
*** Minimal signage and what is posted is in direct contradiction with reality. Truly awful customs agents.

Nothing

1. Defines stupefying like learning that the priest that taught me in high school, gave me a job when I returned from graduate school burned out and unemployed, and officiated at my wedding ceremony, has run off with the church secretary.

Learning that he may have been the catalyst for the secretary's divorce, finalized a mere six weeks before the two ran off together, is equally stupefying.

2. Defines momentarily terrifying like watching a tire, still attached to the rim, fall from the expressway above, bounce all over the road, somehow miss multiple vehicles (including mine, which I paid off last month) nearly run over a pedestrian on the sidewalk and roll down the street.

3. Nothing defines annoying as much as listening to the woman two seats away alternately tsk, sigh and comment (loud enough to be distracting, quiet enough that I could not eavesdrop) her way through the movie J and I were trying to watch this afternoon, at the Regent Square Theater. Running into her in the bathroom afterwards was also annoying, as I was still in the mood to give her a hard time.

I Have the Answers

I was going to write a detailed entry about the number of strangers who walked up to me today and asked me seemingly random questions, but I can only remember two incidents. I know there were more. It feels as if there were more. But I can only remember two and only one really stands out.

Stranger One asked possibly the most random question I will ever get from any individual. Which is saying something, because I have fielded some really weird questions over the years.

We were standing near the front of the bus, waiting for it to stop, when she turned to me and asked “Is tomorrow Thursday or Friday?

Sadly, I had to pause and really think about what she was asking me. For a moment I found myself pondered the question about what day it was today and what day it would be tomorrow. And for a moment, I was not certain how to answer her question.

When I responded that tomorrow was a Thursday, she remarked that it was strange, because it felt like today was a Thursday. I found myself agreeing with her premise. A week in which one must pause to determine what day it is, is a long week indeed.

The Unwell Elevator

The elevator at work is "not well". This is not my phrasing, this is how my boss decided to describe the series of events that lead to the malfunction of the elevator - while I was inside it.

Every morning I go through the front door, check the alarm system* and walk down the hall to take the elevator to the upper floor.

Every morning this winter I have stepped on the elevator, noticed how c.o.l.d it is inside, press the button for the second floor and wait for the machine to rise and the doors to open

This morning I followed the routine, except the machine most definitely did not rise and open. Instead it started up towards the second floor, dropped with a teeth-jarring shudder, paused for too long and began heading down. To the basement.

Slightly perturbed by this turn of events, I pulled out my cellular phone and called the only coworker I was certain would be in the building at that time**. He was rather amused when I explained to him that I was calling from the elevator and that I appeared to be stuck. As we were discussing my options, the doors open and I stepped out into the basement.

My coworker was kind enough to tell me which door I needed to go through to get out of the basement and was waiting for me at the office back door.

When informed that the elevator has decided to stop working in rather dramatic fashion, my boss printed up a sign and taped it to the front door. Part of the sign reads:

"The elevator is not well. We think it has a cold".

Which was accurate in its way. The hydraulic fluid froze.

*I have set off the alarm three times since I started this job, much to my embarrassment and the amusement of my boss. Now I review the code in my head before I enter the building, just in case.
**I work with night owls. It was almost 8:45 and only one coworker was there. Most of them show up between 9 and 9:15 and leave around 6:00 in the evening.