Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

Being unemployed affords me with all sorts of time. Use it wisely, right? Or lose it.

I decided to use it after an experience last week at the post office on M Street Northwest in Washington, D.C.

I handed the clerk a small box to mail, labeled with a Priority Mail label that I had altered. I had torn off the blue part that said Priority Mail so it looked like a plain old label. But the clerk sniped at me. “You can’t tear the top part off and use it as a label.”

She wouldn’t mail the package at the first-class rate of $1.56. The cost of sending it via Priority Mail was $4.95—more than a $3 difference. I left the counter in search of a white piece of paper to use as a label.

Dang, if that postal clerk didn’t have her eye on me. “You can’t use our forms,” she said in a loud voice as she was serving another customer and saw my hand reach for a form. I had intended write on the back, if it were plain, and tape it over the no-no label. Geesh, I thought. She’s making a big deal about this?

When I asked for some Scotch tape, she said I could buy some. I ended up scratching off the old label with a pen and turning the box over to write the address. She accepted that.

A day later I noticed on my receipt that the post office is interested in my experience. So I went online to express it but got a survey that asked multiple choice questions. I answered them, hoping that when I got to the end I’d get a chance to type some free-flowing thoughts into a text-field box about this woman’s nasty attitude. But no such luck.

I can’t believe the package would have have been returned for more postage because of the altered Priority Mail label. But that’s what she said.

Whether or not that is true is not something I’m going to investigate. I’ve got bigger issues looming ahead, such as paying the mortgage.

In these hard times, why can’t we be a little kinder to each other?