For fun the other day, we went to the post office as a family to try and apply for passports. Now I’ve been married for 2 1/2 years and my passport is still in my maiden name which is 1000% pathetic. That means that I haven’t left the country at all in the past 2 1/2 years. Not once. So lame. Courtney needs a passport as we’re hoping to take a trip next month and little people need passports.
I filled out all the paperwork online. I filled out her app and mine. I filled out the fields online that the form told me were required. I mean, if the government doesn’t need to know my phone number, I’m sure as hell not going to tell them. I mean, what if they want to call me and interrogate me about my shopping habits at Target and why am I spending so much time on Twitter. No way, they can’t have my number. Hell, I got called for jury duty the other day. I don’t think so. Damn government conspiracies.
Anyway, I did what I was supposed to with the forms. I totally missed the part about being able to make an appointment online because I was only half paying attention to what the website said. REQUIRED fields people, that’s all I cared about.
So we get to the post office at 11:45 on Monday, I’m supposed to meet Paul there at noon. For a minor, both parents need to be present so this is considered a family outing. I figure I can get the ball rolling with the pictures and whatnot while I wait for Paul. I’m standing at the passport office and the lady barks across the room, “Do you have an appointment?” I say I don’t and she points to this line that’s at least 15 people deep. So I get in line and I wait. At precisely noon, Paul shows up and there are now only 2 people in front of me.
Now, it’s noon on a Monday and there are only two people working behind the counter. I understand that the USPS is suffering and all and they’re having cutbacks and I’m pretty sure I know why…
With 1 person in front of us left to go to the counter, one of the employees disappears. The passport lady. We go up to the counter and are then told to wait to the side. Passport lady comes back, does some crap, leaves again, comes back again, leaves again and then waves us over. Immediately she’s barking at me for not completing the form. But according to the Internet, I’ve completed the forms. And she waves me aside. And then we have to make photo copies. The copy machine doesn’t work.
We finally get to go back and take pictures. Courtney is a champ and is her usual adorable self with her hair all sticking up and looking at the lady like, “Who are you and what is this nonsense all about?” I sit to have my pictures taken and like all other pictures I’ve had taken in my life, I smiled. “Don’t smile.” Which of course makes me laugh and smile even more. I can’t help it, this extremely unpleasant woman doesn’t want me to smile, I think, because there’s no smiling in this building at all. There’s to be no happiness, no smiling, no joy under the roof of the US Postal Service. I’m most definitely, clearly smirking in my pictures. Instead of a happy face, I have a full on shit-eating grin and dirty hair. Fortunately the passport is only good for 10 years.
I know we don’t all love our jobs. I have to imagine that working in the post office has some really miserable moments. The line was never less than 10 people long while we were there. They’re understaffed. I’m sure underpaid. A couple of customers didn’t speak English. One guy was really rude. But isn’t happy customer service somewhat of a two way street? If you’re happy as an employee, smile at them, say hello and maybe your customer will be pleasant back. Being nice to them won’t solve the language barrier but perhaps you should have at least one employee that speaks Spanish (yes, I know, speak English in America and all that but if you know that customers are going to come in that don’t speak the language, maybe you should plan for that). If we could have gone anywhere else to get our passports done, you know we would but the USPS has that market cornered. Things could be better there. They’re talking about going to a 5 day a week delivery schedule, closing office, raising rates, putting kiosks in grocery stores. They need it. They need to do something. I think in addition to all that they want to cut and change, they should add customer service to their list of things to work on.
