postal

 

it's about damn time for one of these.

our post office, located at 8201 harford road, is only open from 9am to 5pm.  so explain to me, a federal government employee, why they work seven hours and get a full hour for lunch.  paid.  i work eight hours and get 30 minutes unpaid, including travel time, for my lunch. 

during that full hour for lunch, the entire building is closed to customers.  you can open your own mailbox to retrieve mail and drop off mail into a little slot. that's it.  the door is locked to the part of the building where you get forms.  there used to be 3 machines where you could buy stamps and a scale where you could weigh your packages and enter the zip code to estimate your postage.  that is all gone.  now there are three trash cans and an empty counter.  not even a pen.  so we could take our trash to the post office between 1-2pm.  that is about all you can do there.

on my lunch break (note, it is not a lunch HOUR), we have to take turns, leaving the checkpoint running, and sometimes we even have to take that break late, long after everyone is tired and starving, to make sure that passenger flow is not interrupted.  we don't get to schedule a specific time and lock down the checkpoint.  why can't the post office take turns?  did they skip that part in kindergarten?  what could possibly take an hour?  they can't stop at the post office during their lunch hour.  it's closed.

i needed two lousy stamps.  now i have to wait until monday, after i get home, sit long enough to be exhausted and have to leave the house again, pollute the planet with emissions from my SUV to make a special trip because they are closed for their lunch HOUR when i get home from work.  because i sure as shit am not going to fight rush hour traffic today (which begins at 3pm in my tiny corner of the planet) to park in one of their 9 parking spaces to buy 2 friggin stamps because if i buy more than 2 effing stamps, they will raise the postage before i can finish the whole book of 20 and then i will have to make another trip to the post office to get the 2- or 3-cent stamps to make up the difference in the postage....

this is seriously off-pissing.  and they thought THEY had anger management problems.  try being a federal employee who DOESN'T get paid to eat lunch and only work seven hours a day.  and needs two melon-farming stamps.