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.