How To Go Postal In 20 Minutes Or Less!

I finally have a referent for the phrase "going postal." And it came, unsurprisingly, courtesy of the US Postal Service.

I had ordered the first season of Burn Notice (which is, by the way, a great show. The new season starts July 10...you should check it out!) from Amazon a couple of weeks ago, and it was supposed to be delivered on June 23. So I was very excitedly tracking it online every day, to see how much closer it was. (It ended up sitting in Denver for nearly a week...stupid Denver.) And on June 23, I couldn't wait to get home and open my package!

Alas, it was not to be. I got home to an empty mailbox, an empty porch, no sign of the ever-cheerful Amazon box with its little smiley face. So I was disappointed, but I figured that it would definitely arrive the next day. And sure enough, the next day when I did the online tracking, it showed that my package had arrived in town the day before. However, it also showed that a "delivery attempt" had been made at 3:00 on June 23, but there was no one home. Which is total bullshit. My husband was home all day, and had anyone knocked, he would have heard it. So I knew right then that they were lying.

The website also said that since delivery had been "attempted," a little orange slip would have been left at my door, telling me when to expect a second delivery attempt. Which was also bullshit. So I decided to call the Post Office's Customer Service number, to find out what had become of my package.

I picked the number that specifically said it was for Tracking and Confirmation, since that seemed like the most logical place to start. I had my tracking number ready, called the number I had found...and got to talk to a computer.

It wasn't just one of those that gives you your menu options and you get to hit #1 for English, or whatever. No, this was one of those computers that pretends it's a person, the kind that says things like "What can I help you with today?" or "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that." Because of course you have to talk to it.

Now, I am not a big talker. Sure, I talk to my friends, or to people that I hope will give me money. But talking to strangers is not one of my favorite pastimes. Talking to computers that are pretending to be fully conscious human beings, when in fact they are even stupider than most of the people I am forced to see on a daily basis (and that's really saying something, because most of the people I see on a daily basis have the intelligence of bread. Really really stupid bread. In fact, listening to the people at my work causes my IQ to drop at least 3 points a day) does not make me happy at all.

So I was already not a happy camper, even though the phone call had just started. But it got worse. I followed the voice prompts, actually talking to the stupid computer since I had no other choice, and got to a place where I could enter my tracking number. I did so, and was told that "No information is available at this time." That, of course, just made my blood pressure rise even more. And I determined that the computer would unable to help me and I needed to talk to an actual human being. So I started hunting through the voice prompts for that option.

What an idiot I am! I should have known that it would not be that easy. Those computer phone systems are designed to carefully shield the human workers from the actual customers. So the stupid computer would ask me something, such as "Would you like to order postal products?" and I would say "Customer Service," or "Talk to a person," and that annoyingly cheerful voice (which is all the more annoying by its very inability to convey emotion. If I am annoyed, I want the person on the other end of the phone to be annoyed, too. But that stupid computer phone voice bitch just kept being perky.) kept saying "I'm sorry, that is not an option" or some stupid shit like that. Or I wouldn't say anything, but the idiot computer would mistake the sound of me breathing for an answer, so it would switch me into a different menu.

I spent 20 minutes trying to get around that evil phone system. 20 minutes!! 20 minutes of my life, stolen by the US Postal Service and their evil, incredibly stupid but oh-so-perky phone voice woman! I was ready to kill her by the time I got through to an actual human, ready to wrap the phone cord around her neck and just squeeeeeze very slowly, while she said, in that relentlessly cheerful voice, "I'm sorry, that is not an option at this time!" And then she would die, and lay lifeless on the floor, and I would stab her repeatedly with my letter opener, and I would feel so much better!

So eventually, it all worked out. Despite the phone voice woman's efforts, I was eventually able to get an actual human, who told me where I could pick up my package, and I did, and the DVDs are great, just like I knew they would be. So it's okay, it's fine, I no longer feel homicidal, which I'm sure makes everyone who knows me feel better. But my ordeal has caused me to have a new and greater understanding of how someone could go into a Post Office and kill everyone with a shot gun. Except, when I do it, I'm going to use a rocket launcher. And I'm going after the phone banks first.