What We're Looking at Here is a Failure to Consistently Regulate

On Thursday, I momentarily considered having my mom pick up a package at the post office. We decided that she would not make the attempt. She was worried about not having the orange postcard notification thingy.

The package in question was addressed to Genius. We were all busy after school, so I figured it would have to wait until Friday. Mom changed her mind, and popped in later that afternoon.

"I know you probably won't give it to me because I don't have the card...but my daughter wanted me to pick up a package for her today." Mom gave him my name. A woman's name. Not the name on the package address.

The man behind the counter smiled. "Oh, she called." He disappeared into the back room. "Here it is." He handed Mom Genius's package. No request for ID. No signature. Just shoved that package, a fancy schmancy camera lens, across the counter to her.

Let the record show that I most certainly did NOT call the post office. I was working, by cracky. The last time I called a post office was to report kids pooping and wiping their butts on their underwear, and stuffing it into specific mailboxes, and bragging about it. That's a federal offense, you know. And for all my trouble trying to be an upstanding snitch and flag-waving citizen and a concerned villager trying to raise responsible children, I was given the runaround. The post office I called did not want to take a report because the address of the poopy-underwear receivers was served by the post office in the next county. So much for federal offenses.

Anyhoo...that federal employee was flat-out lying. I suppose my mother herself could have called him, and pretended to be me, and described herself, and said that I wanted her to pick up that package.

Here's what irks me. The last time I went to that post office, the dead-mouse-smelling one, and waited until the metal curtain was raised after the lunch shut-down, I was read the riot act. Even though I had my orange postcard notification thingy, and the clerk commented to me that I usually send in my sons to pick up the packages (so obviously she knew me), she told me that I needed identification. Since there was a line, and I had waited ten minutes for lunch to conclude, she did not send me out to the car to get it. But she chastised me in front of that lined-up audience.

I refrained from giving her the "I pay your salary, you are here to serve me" speech. I have public-servanted myself, so I didn't go there. Because I'm classy like that. But she ticked me off. Doubly so, in retrospect, because her colleague, Mr. I Never Met A Stranger I Didn't Hand A Package To, has no qualms about fabricating details to enable potential fraudsters to get their meat-hooks on my mail-order merchandise.

What we're looking at here is a failure to consistently regulate.