[Well serious journalistic style blogging is still not going to be my stock in trade this time of year folks because I just don't have the time. So let this serve as my preemptive apology to all who have been needling me to write stuff and may be saying, "Hey, how come Joe has time to write THIS silly blog post when he won't write the important one I've been asking for for months?!" Sorry about that, but as I've noted before, for $3500 a week with a written guarantee of 90 weeks I WILL be your huckleberry, I promise, but not until then. 'Kay?]
So. What has inspired us to take time out of our busy schedule to sit down and write an original blog post today?
What has inspired us is a series of events that combines a number of my pet issues; including horrific customer service, the United States Postal Service, and bad marketing which is so bad that those who perpetrate it should be stoned, by which I do NOT mean invited into your condo for some musty Hawaiian doobage, but rather tied to the lamppost and struck with bricks until dead.
Some of my commentary here will allude to the employees of the United States Postal Service which, to me, is an overly wordy allusion, so let’s just create a shorthand reference here and call them “Cocksuckers.”
Anyways back in early December I took the initiative to send Christmas cards this year, which with work and personal is a LOT of Christmas cards (and for all of you who did not get one from me, just imagine how huge my contact base must be if YOU did not even make it onto the list. I am talking LEGIONS of Christmas card recipients here.)
A couple of my cards came back, for lack of postage. This is odd, because I double check my stamps before dropping letters in the mail box the same way Rain Man double checks his socks before depositing them in the dresser drawer. There is no way I left off a stamp. Then, in a conversation with a local friend, I heard she had cards come back because the new “holiday” USPS stamps fell off. Well, that made perfect sense to me, because the glue on those stamps did seem flimsy, and as I said I never forget to include a stamp.
The cards that came back had a red ink stamped notice “Returned for lack of postage, when remailing cross out this notice or place stamps over it” where the stamp would have been. So I put on a new stamp and re-mailed. Unfortunately, the re-stamped cards came back.
Charge to Joe so far by the Cocksuckers: 88 cents each and still no delivery.
The next stage in this drama took place last week when I needed to send out the month’s bills, and was also sitting on over $30 worth of the USPS “Holiday” stamps each with an angel’s breath worth of adhesion waiting to surrender to the elements. So I wrote out all the checks and sealed the envelopes and applied my “Holiday” stamps each with a tiny piece of transparent tape holding the stamp onto the envelope by the lower portion.
Lo and behold, today the first of these bill payments came back to me, with a red ink stamp by the Cocksuckers stating “Stamps void when coated, covered, defaced or reused. Return for postage.”
Thus I can expect all of my 20 or so payments to come back, many of which will be late by the time I re-package and resend, and some of which may never be received since I don’t have much faith in the Cocksuckers to really care about whether these are returned in a timely manner. The first which I received back today was to a charity, and some of them were specifically for Haiti, so there you go: The US Government refusing to accept posted instruments which each displayed completely verifiably paid transit costs, returned for the good old government excuse: I shall screw you over because I can, because I work for the government.
Note it should make no difference to the Cocksuckers at USPS. Obviously the stamps have been paid for, and obviously the only reason for putting a piece of tape is because they have been falling off. I get nothing out of having to add extra adhesion. These people are simply looking for a reason to refuse to deliver my letters. Letters arrive wet, they arrive spindled or mutilated, and the USPS ostensibly tries to deliver each. But with their crappy Holiday stamps they take the opportunity to use the little piece of tape as a reason to send it back.
Thanks a lot, Cocksuckers.
The key takeaway from this is, in my view: Never buy anything from the US Government that you don’t absolutely HAVE to buy. Holiday stamps are a total waste of money, and I will end up trashing over $30 in stamps because I was stupid enough to buy them from the Cocksuckers at the USPS.
Also, DO NOT SEND ANYTHING VIA THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE IF YOU CAN SEND IT ANOTHER WAY.
This is like Obama Motors, friends. Just like you should never, ever buy a car from Chrysler or GM ever again, you should make a full scale effort to avoid doing business with the Cocksuckers at USPS.
Here is a useful vignette for those of you who live in Sterling Park: Go to Costco. On the wall between the food court and the employee cafeteria is a whiteboard listing the sheer efficiency ratings of Costco employees. It’s purely numbers: How many customers was each Costco employee able to check out. Some of them are amazing, and you experience this when you go through the line at Costco, Their job is to do their job and they are very, very good at it.
Compare this to the Sterling Post Office, where more often than not the employee mission seems to be to make each transaction last as long as possible so as to ensure the minimum number of potential customers are served during the course of a day. These are the Cocksuckers whose salary you are paying, and who go out of their way to make your life difficult and, if you were stupid enough to purchase their Holiday stamps, to keep your letters from arriving at the intended destinations. They find ways to avoid delivering your mail, costing you money and costing the people you want to pay money, while also skimming money from your pocketbook the whole time.
Pay your bills online, spend a little more to send your packages with Fed Ex or UPS, and help put the Cocksuckers at USPS out of business.
And throw away those Holiday stamps, they are useless and you have been had.
