B.O. at the P.O. (Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week: Day 3)

We have loads of packages we need to mail round the "liberry," but no one asked me to haul them to the Post Office. In fact, Mrs. C took petty cash to run to Wally World, so I couldn't have taken those packages even if I wanted to. Which I didn't. Like a dumbass, though, I used my afternoon break to go to the post office anyway to do some mailing of my own.

I truly hate going to the post office as part of my work duties, because we always have 50 ILLs to mail and they and the inherent slowness of whichever postal clerk happens to help me (usually the ONLY clerk) clogs up the damned line even moreso than it's usually clogged. However, I reserve a particular hatred for going to the post office in December; for it's in December that ehhhhhveryone is doing all of their last minute Christmas package-mailing—most of the actual packing of which they could have done at home, but decided to do at the post office, cause that's inconvenient for EVERYONE—and this screws up the line even more and generally making everyone feel less merry. In kind, our local post office usually responds to the increase in traffic by putting even less people on the desk.

yaaaay.

When I arrived, there were five other people wedged into the tiny corner that the local P.O. has set aside for queueing. One of them was Mr. Stanky. He wasn't as blazingly-stinky as I've smelt him before, and his clothes, while disheveled, were not outright filthy. In such close quarters, he was still most unpleasant. Everyone else in line was trying to give him a wide berth, but there was only so far we could move in our attempt to widen the space between he and we.

There were two employees running the desk, but the people standing at their stations were insisting on doing complicated transactions that took FOREVER, so we all had to wait for several minutes before one of the lines opened. Eventually and most uncharacteristically, a third employee came up and opened a new window. I thought "Glory Be! Someone in charge is using their brain." Then one of the other employees told the next person who was able to approach to hold on, that he'd be with them in a moment. He then disappeared for five minutes, leaving the rest of us to wait.

Mr. Stanky was eventually next in line, but hadn't done his package packing at home, so he had to stop and do that and then had to fill out paperwork about it.

Finally, the second desk guy returned and the lines began moving again and I was at last able to mail my single package and flee that stank-choked, line-filled purgatory.