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So here I am in scenic San Francisco, a city, in which, for
all intents and purposes, I should be allowed to live in just because I really
like it here. I like the fact that it is probably the most liberal,
progressive, and environmentally friendly place on earth. A place where you
can’t buy a single serving plastic bottle of water. A place where you bring
your own bags to the grocery store or pay a fee for a paper one. A place where
the majority of taxi cabs are not Crown Victorias, but rather, Priuses. A place
where, up until a couple years ago, you were allowed to walk around buck naked
in the street if you wanted to. They reversed that law when they realized that it was the
people you really didn’t want to see naked who were the ones availing themselves
of that law. If you’ve ever been to a nude beach, you’ve read that book.
But the paradox about San Francisco is: you have to be
stinkin’ rich to afford to live here. Rents are so high that if they fell out
the window, they would die. If you want to live here, you have to be a super
smart rich kid who takes a luxury wi-fi-enabled coach to your systems analyst job
at eBay, a place where poor people go to try to sell their old underwear. The
toilets on these coaches actually use Dom Perignon for flushing fluid.
So when the low-to-moderate income Bills come to San
Francisco, they stay in a hotel kind of place where the rooms are still less
than a hundred dollars a day. This place is rated minus three stars and is so
sad that travel sites like Expedia and Hotwire don’t even list it. This place
is so below mediocre that when friends pick us up, due to embarrassment, we
meet them in front of the Motel 6. We would meet them in front of the Fairmont,
but really, who’s kidding whom?
One thing we like to do is send postcards to friends and
relatives. Most of these postcards have pictures of places tourists like to go
to like Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, Alcatraz, and the
Motel 6.
So yesterday we went to a post office to buy six postcard
stamps. When we got there we were pleased to find a line with only one person
ahead of us. The post office had a nice display of sub-American Greetings, dollar-store
quality greeting cards for sale.
“Why is the post office selling cards?” Other Bill asked to
no one in particular, but I decided I should answer it, or else the man in
front of us would.
“If you were as financially strapped as the US Postal
Service, you’d be selling your underwear on eBay just to make a penny.”
Because it was a US post office, there were no postal clerks
behind the counter. They were all in the back performing pension payout calculations
with variables of different dates of retirement. Either that, or they were just
slacking off.
The man in front of us shifted from foot to foot,
restlessly. Apparently, he had been waiting a long time for a clerk to come out
and tender his resignation and retire. To our good luck, eventually there
appeared in the lobby what looked like a postal clerk. This meant that she was dressed in
postal garb, with a little patch of an eagle on her starched blue shirt.
She also answered the looming question, “What looks like a
postal clerk but isn’t?” The answer we learned (and I will explain about later)
is “A Postal Lobby Assistant.” Sadly, this is an actual job, and not just a
punchline to the riddle.
The Postal Lobby Assistant asked the long-waiting man in
front of us what he needed today.
The now-testy man said, “Do you have a stamp machine here?”
“I beg your pardon?” said the PLA, who seemed outraged that
there was such a machine in existence.
“A stamp machine. All I need is one stamp for this bill.”
“No, sir,” said the PLA, who wrote something down on a scrap
of paper. “But if you hand this to the next available employee, they’ll be
happy to help you.”
“What is this?” asked the tired man.
“That’s what tells the associate what you need.”
“Well, hell, I don’t need that,” the old man said. “I can
tell them myself what I need. I just need a stamp!”
“Well someone will be right with you,” lied the lobby
assistant, and then she moved on to the next in line, which was us.
So the Postal Lobby Assistant position is basically an
English-to-English translator of goods and services. Apparently the Postmaster
General came to the conclusion that all postal clerks had IQ’s of 30 or lower
and were incapable of comprehending customers' needs, but miraculously could still read
the handwriting of an over-30-IQ Postal Lobby Assistant, and thus the position
was born.
Before she could speak (or lie) to us, Other Bill made a
pre-emptive strike and asked, an in incensed postal customer tone, “Is anyone
working behind the counter?”
“What?” asked the PLA. Apparently she was partially deaf. I
know she wasn’t stupid, because her IQ, by job description alone, was over 30.
“I said, is there anyone working behind the counter?”
“Oh yes. They’re just helping other customers,” said the
PLA, lying through her insured teeth. “Now what can I help you with?”
She prepared her pencil and her scrap of paper, which was a
photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of an officially sanctioned US Postal
Service form called a Lobby Assistant Checklist (see photo above).
“I just want six postcard stamps,” said Other Bill.
She wrote down on her scrap, “6 postcard stamps.” Apparently
on the Lobby Assistant Checklist, there is no check box for stamps, because
most people who go to the post office are there to order the veal cutlet, not
stamps.
“Very well, is that all you need?” said the Assistant, as if
she were actually doing something to help us.
Other Bill shrugged and said, “I guess that’s it.”
The Assistant then moved to the next person in line, which
was now expanding.
At last, one postal clerk had realized that it was not his
day to retire, and he came out and began a lengthy, drawn out philosophical
discussion with a customer already at the counter about the five vs. nine digit zip code agenda. This
diatribe forced the impatient man with the one-stamp need to give up and leave
in a huff, muttering something about getting a got-dammed stamp faster at Walgreens.
“So, what, postal clerks can read English but they can’t
understand it?” I rhetorically asked Other Bill. We just stood there laughing,
and I insisted that he not give up the Lobby Assistant Checklist, but speak in
his own voice when our time came.
Finally the one clerk behind the counter invited us to his
domain and asked, “What can I help you with today?”
“I’d like six postcard stamps, please,” Other Bill
requested.
“For Europe?” asked the clerk.
Apparently, postal clerks have been coached on confusing
customers to get them to pay more for stuff they don’t need. Either that, or it
was our Nordic broad shoulders, gleaming white teeth and thick blond hair that
made the clerk think we were Scandinavian and were sending home well wishes.
“No, domestic, please,” I said.
“I think I have some,” he said, digging through his drawer.
He rang us up and handed us our stamps, and we walked away. I looked down at
the stamps.
There were four there, not six. We went back to the window.
“You said four,” the clerk told us.
“No, I said six,” Other Bill insisted.
“Oh okay, so you want two more?”
“Yes please,” said Other Bill. I paid him the change and got
my two stamps, along with an apologetic glassine envelope to put all six stamps
in.
As we exited through the glass doors onto Geary Street,
Other Bill said, “See, if you had let me use the Lobby Assistant Checklist, he
would have gotten the order right the first time.”
We laughed and headed to the Safeway. There was no way I was
going to surrender that checklist. I needed it for this story.
That was yesterday. Today we walked up to the FedEx store
and stood behind one person to get the Postal Lobby Assistant Checklist scanned
to a jpg file.
“I’ll be right with you,” said the woman behind the counter.
“No hurry,” I said. Less than a minute later another FedEx
employee came to the counter, apologized for making us wait, and then scanned
the file to my thumb drive and charged us 97 cents. She then thanked us again
for waiting patiently.
And unbelievably, she performed the entire transaction
without having anyone to write it up for her.
I was going to say something about how the feds could learn
something from private industry, but I guess that’s already implied.
billwiley.blogspot.com by Bill Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
