Good Help Is Hard To Find

I went to the post office the other day so I could mail out some ARCs, a book to a prize winner, and a couple of gift CDs. I realized at the last minute that one of the packages had an error in the address line; part of it was missing. I suggested to the clerk that she simply affix the postage to it in stamps rather than meter it so I could mail it at a later time after fixing the label (metered mail is supposed to be sent the same day the dated meter strip is applied.)

The clerk, a female, immediately began scribbling numbers down on a pad and adding them up. It was clear that she didn't have a clue how to calculate $1.35 worth of postage. "Let's see, three stamps are $1.17," she muttered. "I need . . . ah . . ." she stopped to scribble the numbers and calculate the difference. I'm no math whiz, but I did that sum in my head in a flash. I politely prompted her that the difference between $1.17 and $1.35 came to 18 more cents and reminded her that the 24-cent stamp covers each additional ounce of postage. Therefore, if the package weighed 5 ounces, it would be one 39-cent stamp plus four 24-cent stamps for each of the additional 4 ounces.

Simple, right? Well, Ms. P.O. Clerk looked at me like I came from another planet, then went back to her pad and paper, trying to figure how she could come up with 18 cents postage. I guess she didn't have odd stamp amounts like that. But surely she had 24-cent stamps? People send mail over 1 ounce all the time. Lots of those Hallmark cards require extra postage. What does she do in a case like that, sell them two 39-cent stamps?

In the end she put two 10-cent stamps on the envelope. I questioned why she put 20 cents when 18 would have done it. She refunded me my 2 cents (a matter of principle rather than money; since I told her how to do it and she chose to ignore me and do it in a way that cost me more money,) and thus ended our transaction.

Some things in life aren't surprising (like the stripper who called in to a radio talk show, when asked if stripping was a lucrative profession, replied, "What do you mean?") and are almost to be expected. But I'm amazed that a bona fide U.S. Postal Service employee can't figure out what to do when she has to sell postage stamps in denominations other than the value of a current first class stamp. I've sent out enough partial manuscripts over the years to know how the additional ounce postage works, but this woman was my age or older and has probably worked at the post office for many years. I find it appalling that she didn't know something so basic. How did she ever pass the exam? I can just see her writing down "Arkansas" as the state abbreviated "AK" (Arkansas is abbreviated AR; AK stands for Alaska.)

There are a million stories about the sad state of customer service in America today. This has been one of them.