mailing failings

For the last few months I have been at the post office a lot. At least once a week, often two or three times. Most of the time it's fine, sometimes the line is long.. sometimes the other customers are beyond unprepared for their turn at the window, sometimes there are severe language barriers, etc. It is what it is.

There is one clerk that has been there for years.. I usually end up at her window and she's never given me a problem regarding anything I've mailed. I pay for things online, have her double check, get my receipt, and leave.

But.. then there's the other side of it all- the clerk that seems to really not especially like me. I get told different policies and rules all the time and it's such garbage. Their attitude is, at best, very "short" with most of their customers. Unless, I've noticed, the other person isn't speaking English. (I hope I'm wrong, but I've stood in that line enough times to see hundreds of other customers transactions, so..) Which has been going on for close to a year, except for the last few weeks that it seemed like they were slightly less unpleasant towards me. And it was fine. But..

Then there was today. Where every bit of distaste for me was back. And probably more. It was essentially the postal police. I was told I could not reuse one type of official post office product to mail in another method. (That's going to be a problem since 90% of my mailing supplies are reused.) For example, if someone sent me something in an Express envelope, I could not, disassemble it and reuse it for Priority mail. What? I even repeated what the clerk said and added "seriously?" to the end of it. Yup.. seriously.

I raised my eyebrows, looked away, and said uh, alriiight under my breath. But "just this once" the clerk allowed me to do it.

The usps policy is now reduce, reuse, recycle? I wonder if they know that. Whatever, happy Earth Day, right?