Going Postal
Feeling lucky from all my ZIP code amusement this week, I decided to [finally] give the old US Postal Service a call and try once more to negotiate an international change of address. Here's how it went:
[10 minutes of navigating electronic voice recognition system]
Postal Person: Hi this is Catherine. I'd like to help you with a change of address.
Matt: Great!
Postal Person: Can you please give me your name?
Matt: Sure. [gives name]
Postal Person: Can you spell that last name for me?
Matt: [spells last name]
Postal Person: Great. Now I need the address you've moved from.
Matt: [talks through old address, spelling out typical troubly bits]
Postal Person: Okay. Now I need your new address.
Matt: It's an international address, okay?
Postal Person: Oh. I have to say I'm sorry then. We can't process international changes of address this way. You'll have to come to your neighborhood US Post Office to make the request.
Matt: Excuse me?
Postal Person: We can't process international changes of address via the phone or the website. You need to stop by your neighborhood US Post Office and fill out the paperwork there.
Matt: Yes, I heard you. Doesn't the phrase "International Changes of Address", all by itself, indicate that I probably have no neighborhood US Post Office?
Postal Person: Sir, there's no need to get upset with me. This is just our policy. I apologize if it doesn't work for you.
Doesn't work for me. What international moving person does it work for?
Anyway, I was as nice to her as I could stand to be, given the circumstances, and begged and grovelled a little, and she gave me the address of my old neighborhood post office and said that if I wrote them a polite letter which I had hand-signed and dated, that they would probably be willing to process the change for me.
Still. "Yearly report: Since instituting our Just Stop By process for international address changes and moves, the amount of backlog work for the international changes division has miraculously reduced by 80%. Our customers must be thrilled!"
* * *
It hasn't been the best of days. This morning I put on one of my favorite black shirts for work. This shirt I had just pulled from the dryer, which I had just run the night before, having realized that there was a load of black clothes (yes, I do a load of blacks — monochromatic wardrobe) which had been accidentally sitting in the washer all weekend.
This didn't strike me as a bad idea at the time.
Until I got halfway up Seymour St to the SkyTrain station and realized, much to my own dismay, that the foul and offensive baby's vomit smell which kept tickling my nose . . . was me.
At work, I told my friend Richard about it, and he was willing to do soundings, taking big sniffs as he gradually stepped closer and closer to me. "You're clear. As long as you don't get more than about . . ." he said, placing his palm about a foot from my shoulder, ". . . this close to anyone."
A friend will help you move. A real friend will help you move bodies.
* * *
The grand finale to the postal theme was when I took the #10 bus through pouring rain down Granville St after work so that I could (in a relatively dry manner) stop by my actual real non-US neighborhood post office to pick up the package that was waiting there for me (a birthday present which had apparently been lurking around in the mail system for a very long time).
When I gave the post office girl my package slip and driver's license (which they always check, to make sure someone else isn't trying to sneak off with my loot, which is cool), she said there was a $10.18 customs duty, which I needed to pay before they could give me my package. I gave her a $10 and two dimes, and they brought out the most miserable looking package I'd ever seen.
It was a box, inside a sealed clear plastic bag, and this box looked like it had, at some point in the recent past, been completely submerged in water. Little water droplets coated the inside of the bag. The box itself had taken on a sort of spherical shape which rectangular boxes simply shouldn't have, and was sort of a fruit-juice-spilled-in-the-lunch-bag color.
The customs declaration form said "Lamp," so, hoping it was a waterproof sort of lamp, I took the box home to open up.
The good news is that it was indeed a waterproof variety of lamp. The bad news is that it was a lava lamp, and what I thought was water from the outside was actually the fluid from within. The thing had been utterly smashed.
I was so sad.
I would have only been a bit disappointed if it hadn't been for the $10 duty on top of it. I almost didn't want to tell my friends, since they'd obviously gone to such lengths to pick it out and ship it to me. It didn't seem fair to anyone.
So, okay? Lesson learned today. Let's hear it, everyone, please repeat after me:
"If we're going to send Matt a present from outside Canada, include 'Gift' in the customs declaration, so that he doesn't have to buy it back from the Canadian government. Especially if it's broken."
There we go.
[10 minutes of navigating electronic voice recognition system]
Postal Person: Hi this is Catherine. I'd like to help you with a change of address.
Matt: Great!
Postal Person: Can you please give me your name?
Matt: Sure. [gives name]
Postal Person: Can you spell that last name for me?
Matt: [spells last name]
Postal Person: Great. Now I need the address you've moved from.
Matt: [talks through old address, spelling out typical troubly bits]
Postal Person: Okay. Now I need your new address.
Matt: It's an international address, okay?
Postal Person: Oh. I have to say I'm sorry then. We can't process international changes of address this way. You'll have to come to your neighborhood US Post Office to make the request.
Matt: Excuse me?
Postal Person: We can't process international changes of address via the phone or the website. You need to stop by your neighborhood US Post Office and fill out the paperwork there.
Matt: Yes, I heard you. Doesn't the phrase "International Changes of Address", all by itself, indicate that I probably have no neighborhood US Post Office?
Postal Person: Sir, there's no need to get upset with me. This is just our policy. I apologize if it doesn't work for you.
Doesn't work for me. What international moving person does it work for?
Anyway, I was as nice to her as I could stand to be, given the circumstances, and begged and grovelled a little, and she gave me the address of my old neighborhood post office and said that if I wrote them a polite letter which I had hand-signed and dated, that they would probably be willing to process the change for me.
Still. "Yearly report: Since instituting our Just Stop By process for international address changes and moves, the amount of backlog work for the international changes division has miraculously reduced by 80%. Our customers must be thrilled!"
* * *
It hasn't been the best of days. This morning I put on one of my favorite black shirts for work. This shirt I had just pulled from the dryer, which I had just run the night before, having realized that there was a load of black clothes (yes, I do a load of blacks — monochromatic wardrobe) which had been accidentally sitting in the washer all weekend.
This didn't strike me as a bad idea at the time.
Until I got halfway up Seymour St to the SkyTrain station and realized, much to my own dismay, that the foul and offensive baby's vomit smell which kept tickling my nose . . . was me.
At work, I told my friend Richard about it, and he was willing to do soundings, taking big sniffs as he gradually stepped closer and closer to me. "You're clear. As long as you don't get more than about . . ." he said, placing his palm about a foot from my shoulder, ". . . this close to anyone."
A friend will help you move. A real friend will help you move bodies.
* * *
The grand finale to the postal theme was when I took the #10 bus through pouring rain down Granville St after work so that I could (in a relatively dry manner) stop by my actual real non-US neighborhood post office to pick up the package that was waiting there for me (a birthday present which had apparently been lurking around in the mail system for a very long time).
When I gave the post office girl my package slip and driver's license (which they always check, to make sure someone else isn't trying to sneak off with my loot, which is cool), she said there was a $10.18 customs duty, which I needed to pay before they could give me my package. I gave her a $10 and two dimes, and they brought out the most miserable looking package I'd ever seen.
It was a box, inside a sealed clear plastic bag, and this box looked like it had, at some point in the recent past, been completely submerged in water. Little water droplets coated the inside of the bag. The box itself had taken on a sort of spherical shape which rectangular boxes simply shouldn't have, and was sort of a fruit-juice-spilled-in-the-lunch-bag color.
The customs declaration form said "Lamp," so, hoping it was a waterproof sort of lamp, I took the box home to open up.
The good news is that it was indeed a waterproof variety of lamp. The bad news is that it was a lava lamp, and what I thought was water from the outside was actually the fluid from within. The thing had been utterly smashed.
I was so sad.
I would have only been a bit disappointed if it hadn't been for the $10 duty on top of it. I almost didn't want to tell my friends, since they'd obviously gone to such lengths to pick it out and ship it to me. It didn't seem fair to anyone.
So, okay? Lesson learned today. Let's hear it, everyone, please repeat after me:
"If we're going to send Matt a present from outside Canada, include 'Gift' in the customs declaration, so that he doesn't have to buy it back from the Canadian government. Especially if it's broken."
There we go.