The Meanest Mailman in the Richest Town off Route 128

The man behind the counter looked disgruntled even before I stepped up to the counter with my packages.

At 10 AM on a Thursday, there was almost no one in the post office and it was too early for his day to have already gone bad. Apparently he didn’t like the looks of me, though, because he didn’t bother to say hello as I approached with my six packages.

“These are all books,” I announced. I handed over the first package. “Could you please check to see how much this is by media mail?”

He weighed it. “A dollar forty-two,” he said. “Is this a book?”

“Yes,” I said. I carefully marked down the amount he’d said onto my list of EBay sales. I’d offered free shipping on this book, which had sold for a measly two dollars.

The man tossed the package behind him, and I handed the next envelope to him.

I consulted my list. This one was free shipping, also. “Media mail on this one, too.”

“A dollar eighty-four,” he said. “You want insurance or anything?”

“No,” I said. This book had sold for about four dollars. With the time I’d spent posting the auctions and wrapping up the books, so far I was practically paying people to take them off my hands.

The third package comprised six plays, which I’d carefully boxed.

“How much by media mail?” I asked.

“Are these books?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“One eighty-four.”

I’d charged the buyer $3.50 for shipping and handling, and $1.84 seemed too cheap. “What about priority?”

He tapped the screen in front of him a few times. “Seven dollars by priority, four-something by parcel post.”

“Uh, it’ll have to be media mail.”

The next package was a similar box, but this one held a pet care kit. With all the wrapping I’d done, I was starting to get confused about which box held what.

The man lifted the box and eyed it. “Is this a book also?”

“Yup,” I said. “No, wait, that one’s the only one that isn’t a book. How much by parcel post?”

“Four-fifty,” he answered, and threw the box to the stack behind me.

I wasn’t doing too well on my shipping. I’d charged this woman only $3.50 for shipping.

My largest package, a set of four hardcover children’s books in a padded envelope, gathered more disapproval. Apparently the weight was suspicious, but he merely hefted the package without comment.

My last package was a set of six science-fiction paperbacks. I’d taken a box from a clock radio we’d purchased a few months ago, and because of the graphics on the outside, I’d wrapped the whole box in brown paper so I could add a shipping label.

“Is this a book?” he asked again.

By now I was getting as tired of him as he was to me. I’d already decided the library in this town was the one for me, primarily because they didn’t seem to have a habit of forgetting to check in my books like the other libraries. But apparently I was going to have to take my postal needs elsewhere.

“Yes, those are books,” I said shortly. “Six paperbacks.”

He lifted the box and moved it from one hand to another, and peered suspiciously underneath it. He shook it, hard.

“You know, if they open this up and don’t find media in it, they’ll send it back and you’ll be out the postage,” he warned me.

“That’s fine,” I said. By now, I was pissed off. I wondered if I should just slash the box open to demonstrate just how book-worthy it was. “Because they’ll find books in it. Will they wrap it back up?”

“Oh yes,” he assured me. “But you know, they have ways of finding out what’s in it without opening it. What with Ebay and all, they’ve found a lot of people abusing the media mail option.”

That would explain the week to 10 days he’d quoted me for delivery estimates. After all, if the post office was so concerned about media mail, they were probably using up five of those days just examining packages, opening them up, maybe reading some of the books, and then sending them on their journeys.

“Well, that’s fine,” I said again. “Because these are ALL BOOKS, except for that one package I told you wasn’t. And media mail consists of books and CDs, right?”

“Tapes also,” he said. He had an injured attitude of someone who was merely trying to prevent me from going to jail for mail fraud.

He didn’t bother asking if I needed anything else, as most postal employees were trained to do. I didn’t bother asking for anything else, and I paid my money and departed.

I was pretty sure that he was going to examine my boxes more closely once I left. I just wished I could be there beside him when he opened them.

“See, that’s a book,” I would say. “This thing here, with all the pages, and the text, and the pretty cover? That’s a book.” I would pause, and sigh sorrowfully. “I guess you guys in the post office don’t read much. After all, you must spend so much of your time HARASSING INNOCENT CUSTOMERS.”

Posted by: ssjane | January 28, 2004 | 11:39 am
Posted in: This Life