DIRTY MAGIC
My wife hates the Post Office with a white-hot passion. This has nothing to do with politics or economics or anything rational; she just believes every single interaction she’s had with the post office has been horrible, terrible, no-good, and thus it should be burned to the ground and the ashes made into a delicious, nourishing tea.
Me, I have a more complex relationship with the Post Office. As a long-time zine publisher and a lifetime short story submitter from wayyyy back in the days before the Internet, I’ve spent a lot of time in post offices. And frankly, I am amazed that I can spend less than 50 cents and have something arrive halfway around the country in a few days. It’s like modern magic.
So, all respect to the beleaguered postal workers of the world (and they are beleaguered, trust me, baby), but stepping into the post office is often like stepping back into 1995. Which might have been the last time the PO was financially stable thanks to our friends in Congress, but let that drift. In other words, have you ever tried to mail something to Canada or (god help you) another country form the PO? Jebus.
Okay, so first you have to fill out a form CN-22 declaring what you’re mailing. Well, first you have to locate a CN-22 somewhere, and that can be a quest of some magnitude. And no, you cannot fill them out online or anything without special permission. How do you get that special permission? I have no idea, because my job is not “learn about obscure postal regulations.”
So you fill it out and then you show up and wait in line, and then you hand the person behind sixteen inches of bulletproof glass your package and your CN-22 and they proceed to type everything into their computer system by hand. I am not shitting you. You stand there while the beleaguered (and they are beleaguered) postal worker laboriously types in everything you just hand-wrote on the form. MY FUCKING GOD.
Now, imagine you have, oh, six or seven packages going to Canada. And one to Germany. OH MY FUCKING GOD you just lost like forty minutes of your life.
How is this the process in 2016? How? For the love of all that is holy, how?
Now imagine you walk into the Post Office at 10:30AM and it is empty. And as you stand there while the postal worker tries to figure out if you really meant 0 instead of O in that postal code, slowly a line of about thirteen people forms behind you. And all you can do is stare straight ahead and do subtle limbering exercises so when they jump you, you’ll be ready.
And yet, in a few days, people will be receiving things from me in other countries. And that still amazes me.
The post office is magical! When you don’t want to harm your fellow….customers? Citizens?
I’ve used a very similar argument when people bitch about postage: “What else can you get for fifty cents? What else can you get to go ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY for fifty cents?”
Plus the other services. Passports! Money orders! Bubble wrap! (I think. Didn’t they stop making bubble wrap? Or is that a Satanic lie?)
The next time you need to mail stuff overseas, call your agent. Then show up at her office. [Do not bring a cat.]
We mail stuff overseas all the time from the comfort of our own desks and chairs (paid for by the sweat of your brow, which makes it all the sweeter.)
We’ll help you. Yes, you will have to have a drink with us but I know you can gird your liver for that challenge.
Try getting artwork shipped from the UK. If it’s lost, that insurance you paid for will cover the cost of the materials. Let me repeat that: the. Cost. Of. The. Materials. So a $5,000 painting from a brilliant artist, gone missing, recovers you about $45.00. Sad. I have a colored pencil piece that took me about 65 hours that I’m afraid to ship.
Odd, I ship overseas a lot, and I seem to be able to do it all online (including customs forms) with no problem. Which saves me from having to go to the Post Office, weigh it and get a price quote. Go home and get person to pay me the cost, go back to the Post Office and be told the quote was wrong and it is $1.84 more than they thought. The ability to do customs on line at usps.com has made my life much easier. Oh, and the book came fine, so I now have to find a fitting place to donate my unsigned copy to.