The Postal Service: We Deliver Zombies

Today’s the day. I can just feel it. It’s 10:15 – exactly between the time the Post Office opens when everybody’s trying to get ahead of everybody else and noon when everybody’s sneaking over on their break. I already notice the parking lot’s far less full. Not a whole lot of people mulling around the place either. Yes!

I enter through the squeaky, automatic glass door, turn left, and there they are – twenty-five people, all holding packages, snaked around the long desk in the middle of the room. The shock and awe on my face must resemble what I look like after having sat on a tack. Or the face on the guy in Munch’s painting, “The Scream.” All I want to do is get the right postage to send off an 8×11 manilla folder containing a long letter to my friend.

I should have known better. Next time, I’ll write my letters here, right on the desk while I’m waiting in line – I’ll have time to compose ten pages if I want.

As Customer Number Twenty-six, I try to regain control by calculating just how long I might be here. Too depressing. Bored, I read the poster on the wall, “Summer Stamps.” It’s November now, not summer, which reminds me it was June when they discontinued the automated customer ticket system. Yet, on the digital wall counter, number 32 still flickers, presumably left over from Customer Number 32 on that long-lost June day. I imagine him still standing here, a zombie, holding a parcel in his rigor mortice-stiff arms.

As Customer Number Twenty-seven enters, I now get to enjoy his look of shock and awe. Same with Customer Number Twenty-eight. (Edward Munch must have frequented post offices.) Customer Twenty-nine turns around and leaves (along with impatient Number Eighteen who follows suit). Now we’re getting somewhere!

There’s five clerk postal bays in front of us. I’ve never seen five postal clerks in here – ever. Today’s there’s three. If the customers looked dead, the clerks come across as coldly limp, at best. One goes in the back and never returns. Did she die back there, die with all the others who’ve never returned to serve us? Just wondering.

I notice one clerk’s been with a customer for ten minutes. When did sending mail get so complicated? What could they possibly be talking about? What’s he mailing – air bags, cremated remains, ammunition?

But now I see the clerk smile. Hey, he’s not supposed to smile or chill or chat! He’s here to serve us – and fast. But can I blame him? Why speed up and service 500 irritated customers a day when you can get away with 300? Even 300 – isn’t that slow death for any clerk to serve in one overworked day?

I see the next customer has 8 packages. I hate Christmas. I hate it already. And it’s only early November. Someone embalm me – now.

So, as I stand here waiting in line, I compose my “Ways to Improve the United States Postal Service” list:

*Just sell stamps

*Let customers redeem their two foot-long Post Office receipts for stamps

*Eliminate Christmas altogether

*Or just disband, like aging rock groups do. Living Death, Crushed Butler and Lucifer’s Friend did (their names gone, but not forgotten, explaining exactly how I feel right now – probably Postal workers, too).

Personal Shopping Cart Space and the Effect of Christmas Upon It

Quote of the day: Hail!  Hail!  The gang’s all here. — D. A. Estrom

Some people say Christmas is the most heartwarming holiday of them all.

“Silver bells, silver bells / It’s Christmas time in the city”

As I walk through the front doors of one of Santa Fe’s upscale grocery stores, the produce department sounds like a cattle drive gone cowbell crazy. Everywhere I look, aisles are crowded. People are rushing by me as if en route to an urgent bathroom visit. Shoppers, with one ear attached to their cell phone, fuss over lettuce as if choosing their last supper, albeit an organic one.

Desperate, I park my cart in a little nook of space on the sales floor the marketing director has actually failed to fill. Unfortunately, in the time it takes me to pick my first item up for purchase, the empty cart is gone, snatched away in a flash.

I go back to the store entrance and get another cart. The only one left is a huge family size monstrosity. As I wheel this green, tank-like contraption back to produce, I get butt-ended by other people trying to turn their tanks around. Space is at an all-time premium today. Some people act as if there’s a personal two foot area surrounding their cart, a zone I’ll get shocked by if proceeding within. (I don’t exactly experience shocks, but do see snarls and flashes of customer teeth.) Wasn’t the average personal cart space in August at least three feet in width?

Cautiously navigating my way out of produce, I head to one of the store’s middle aisles. No way – it’s clear of customers! Overhead piped-in Christmas carols are replaced by “We’re Off to See the Wizard.” I kick my heels in mid-air as I skip down the lane for no other reason than I can.

But, like Dorothy in “Oz’s” Munchkinland Square, shoppers quickly descend upon me from all directions. I stop to watch my fellow New Mexican shoppers race around, as if by doing so they’ll shave time off their unalterable fifteen minute check-out experience.

Christmas lyrics return:  “Strings of street lights / Even stop lights / Blink a bright red and green / As the shoppers rush home with their treasures.” “Shoppers rush home” is a reminder, a warning I must stop and look both ways for oncoming customers whenever exiting an aisle. I’ve learned that cart traffic laws don’t exist during Christmas, despite the fact it’s the season of giving.  How sad. Christmas isn’t a very heartwarming holiday anymore. Because of it, and feeling crowded, people just get grumpy. All I really want to do now is shop, pay, and get out of here.

Approaching my car in the parking lot (with its Munchkin-sized lanes and Munchkin-sized parking spaces), my checkout line bagger suddenly rushes up and says, “Oh, sir, you left your bottled water behind. Here it is. And happy holidays, sir.”

He smiles. I smile. We even shake hands.

“Silver Bells / silver Bells / Soon it will be Christmas Day.”

Maybe Christmas hasn’t completely failed the test after all. I guess it just depends on who you bump into.

 

So Bright as to be Blinding (was my tree decorating delight)

“Being a man is about taking on responsibility,” Dad said to me one day in a  low and throaty delivery. “Some day your time will come to prove yourself.”
Thank goodness I was only nine and had a long time to go before proving myself, whatever that meant.

“Michael, I want you to put up the family Christmas tree and decorate it, then take it down at the end of the season,” Mom said to me one day. What? The moment’s here already? And I’m still only nine? And who, me? Given responsibility with tree icicles? Candy canes? AC powered bubble lights? Electricity? I’ll blow up the tree.

After Dad fulfilled his meek part of this year’s tree task – dumping a freshly cut Scotch pine on the basement floor and getting it to stand inside its cheap aluminum base – I initiated my big task.

I smothered the tree in a blinding sheen of bright silver icicles. Then, I covered the pine’s branches with twice their weight in bright ornaments and lights. To top everything off, I placed the heavy star contraption on the uppermost branch, bending it over like a week-old carrot. But it was fun standing on a tall ladder trying to get the wimpy limb to stand straight. When else had I been allowed to use a tall ladder?

I stood back, assessed my completed tree design, slapped my hands together and smirked. Responsibility wasn’t so bad after all – more like pure merriment! Decorating was art, and I loved it. Perhaps the best part was being allowed to create my tree masterpiece without being overseen, especially by Dad. It was all endless joy.

 

Ten fifteen, Christmas morning and poof, Christmas was cooked.

Once the last gift had been unwrapped, the entire holiday season was a memory. No more anticipation, no more unbridled glee. With all the weeks of preparation and festivities concluded, surely Mom wouldn’t make me take the tree down now, would she? Would she?

To be continued December 28th with my next installment of “Stories From Maybe Boomer.”