Did you hear the one about the unstamped letter? You wouldn’t get it.
I just went to the post office in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and was told that they no longer will postmark an envelope for you—you have to buy the correct number of stamps and then apply them yourselves. This, of course, is inconvenient if you already have one stamp on an envelope but need to add more. I needed 54-cents. The lady said “We don’t have 54-cent stamps right now, but I can give you 54 one-cent stamps.” I was mailing something smaller than my hand. I ended up buying a 61-cent stamp, suffering a 7-cent loss. Last year I noted that the Post Office seemed to be trying out the music business in order to make money, apparently unaware the music business now makes most of its money on creating reality TV characters. Now, the institution has shunned commerce all together and is embracing the hustle. What’s next? Soliciting sandwiches on the N train?
The post office clerk then told me that I couldn’t have the return address on the backside of envelopes going internationally; return-addresses have to be at the top left corner. Why? Because machines read them and don’t know which address to read. I’m both surprised and, oddly, glad that the post office doesn’t have machines that are smart enough to tell the right side from the wrong side of the envelope. So primitive! You know? LIke, I bet they’re still running OS X Leopard.
My last Andy Rooneyism of the day: There were no pens! They used to have pens on chains! Someone asked to borrow my pen. I said sure. It was a 7-Year pen my friend Sarah just gave me—supposed to be able to write up to 2 meters a day for 7 years, so I figured I could spare the ink. The woman goes ahead and starts writing her last will and testament on the customs form. She was a writing fool! After standing there for a good 5 minutes watching her write at a slug’s pace, I finally asked her if I could have my pen back. Harumph.
