Captain’s Logos

I like it because when you walk in, the air temperature is set at a moderate and consistent temperature. The floor is clean, and the decor is sparse, outside of a few posters on the walls reminding you that your supplemental tax bill has changed or you have sex offenders in your neighborhood.

I like the fact that when you walk in you see all the PO boxes on your left, and it makes you feel good because every time you see a PO box on a mailing address, and you feel confused and intimidated because you don't have a PO box or even know what one is, that is where they end up and, hey, it's not so bad.

Even when the line is long with disgruntled and impatient customers, each with mailing problems so complex and distressing they forsook the safety of their home or place of work, the tellers are stoic. Each customer walks to the front of the line and presents his or her situation to the teller as if they were defending their motive for sending this particular piece of mail.

"See all I want to do is send this package here, and I can't do it from home because I don't have the right postage. At least I don't think I do. And I filled out this address box here, see just like it says, and I've put my return address ok? So...you know, just send it."

And then they brace as the lady in gray looks over the package, waiting for the inevitable rolling of the eyes, 'why did I have to get this customer' look, and calling for assistant manegerial aid because this is outside of the scope of their training. Then the assistant manager, angry with life, arrives to point out in dogmatic reprobation how we missed this box and didn't we know that their policy clearly states that you must insure your package a minimum of the equivalent of the co-efficient of the gross weight of the package minus packing tape.

We are ready for this and more, because, hey, this is the way a bureaucracy works.

But the tellers do not do this.


Package going to Sri Lanka? No problem, just fill out this customs form, check this box, lick this stamp and your on your way. I'll help the next customer in line.

Two dozen packages of different weights going to different zip codes? I do this in my sleep at night. Next customer in line please.

Priority or express? We know every nuance of each one, and will happily explain it to you in precise, efficient sentence constructs. Next.

Soon you are at the front of the line, and you feel a affinity for the rules now. You want to be part of the system, you want the stubby teller with a mole on her chin to look over your box with her discerning eye, look at you through her glasses and say, "son you've got it."

All this anti-establishment propaganda our hippie parents breastfed us, along with Seinfeld has made us regard the post office with disdain. A Bunch of crabby old lady with sticks up their butts, we say. We laugh at what most would say was inordinate attention to trivial regulations, we feel superior and liberated because we just go with the flow, and then we bitch at them if our letter wasn't delivered cross country in three days or less.

But they know better. They know what it takes to keep the world's postage running smoothly, and they're damn good at it. And they'll keep stamping, clicking, licking and posting away until precisely 5:30 Mon-Fri, 12:00 Saturday, and just you try and stop them.