Post office earns rap

STEVE SMITH

Some organizations deserve their reputations, others get a bad rap

that they never seem to shake.

Nordstrom is a good example of an organization that deserves its

good reputation. Its employees work hard every day to earn their

reputation over and over again by offering all the elements of a good

shopping experience.

The phone company -- pick one -- is a good example of an

organization that has achieved legendary status as an evil empire but

one in which, from my experience, is not deserved.

Other organizations with legendary reputations -- good and bad --

include the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the Four Seasons

Hotels and almost any domestic airline except Jet Blue.

And then there is the post office. Just when you think you’ve

heard it all, there always seems to be a post office chart topper; a

story so incredible that it has to be true simply because it involves

the post office.

Tina Harris is engaged to Jason Gloer, a specialist in the U.S.

Army. Jason left for Iraq earlier this year and is with the 3/13

Field Artillery, Alpha Battery.

A couple of months ago when another army, the Girls Scouts of

America, was busy selling cookies to every human being in the

country, Tina thought it would be nice to send a box to each soldier

in Alpha Battery. She needed 100 boxes, and between her friends,

family and co-workers, she reached the goal in due time.

“The program was set up so that people could order cookies for the

soldiers or donate the dollar equivalent so they could be purchased,”

Tina told me.

The cookies were finally delivered, and Tina took them to her

office to box them up and take them to a Costa Mesa post office to be

mailed.

“Before I boxed up the cookies, I went to the post office website

and checked on weight and size limitations,” said Tina. “The website

had nothing about either one for an overseas package.”

With the help of her colleague, Josh Runyon, Tina lugged the box

to the post office. Before she left, however, she weighed the box at

her office: It was 66 pounds.

When it was her turn to process her package, Tina was told that

the box was too big. So, Josh cut open the carefully wrapped box

right there in the post office, adjusted the boxes of cookies inside

and reduced the size enough to meet the post office regulations. Then

he sealed it back up, put the label back on and took it to the

counter to be processed.

That’s when the post office started to deserve its reputation.

With the box now within size range, it was placed on a scale that

registered no weight at all. The scale was broken.

“The clerk moved the box down to another scale, which showed the

weight as 66 pounds, 10 ounces,” Tina said.

The clerk went to find the manual that would help confirm the

weight limit to Iraq (heaven forbid anything should be automated

there), but Iraq was not listed, so they used Spain as a guide.

Spain -- the country that bailed out of rescuing Iraq from the

grips of an evil dictator after they caved in to the demands of

terrorists -- was now going to be the benchmark for determining

whether Alpha Battery receives their cookies.

Tina was told that the box was overweight and that some cookies

would have to be removed in order to ship it. But before the clerk

made Tina and Josh open the box again, a supervisor was consulted.

The clerk disappeared, then came back and said that the supervisor

had confirmed that the box would have to be reduced by 10 ounces

before they could accept it for shipment. Ten ounces, readers, is the

exact contents of one box of Thin Mints.

Then came the offer by the clerk to sell Tina a second box to ship

the overage. That was, remember, one box of Thin Mints.

Running through Tina’s mind was not just that all of her

soliciting and organizing was being held up by a drone at the post

office, but also that the cookies for Alpha Battery would not be

shipped that day.

With tears in her eyes, Tina declined to purchase the box and she

and Josh took it back to their office to be repacked.

“The U.S. post office is my only option for shipping overseas to

Iraq,” Tina said.

My own expectations of the post office are already so low that I

thought nothing would make me shake my head in wonder, but there it

is.

Please don’t bore me with the usual stats about the volume of mail

they handle and the low cost. This episode is one for the books.

For our brave men and women in Iraq -- regardless of whether you

believe they should be there -- the wink of an eye from an agency of

their own government would have been a wonderful sign.

But they blew it. And instead of writing how the post office took

the 66-pound, 10-ounce package without hesitation or how they offered

to give Tina Harris a free box and helped her pack the overage of

Girl Scout cookies for our soldiers, I’m writing about the post

office going postal. Again.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer.

Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at

(714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to [email protected].