Post Office Madness

It’s probably a good thing that I’m fascinated with mail because I spend a lot of time at the post office. I just expect to wait in line for twenty minutes and get some good people watching done.

My post office tends to be hopping all the time, so around the holidays the lines are out the door. But I didn’t realize how seriously people took their spot in the post office line until….

It’s the week before Xmas and there are about 20 people ahead of me. I notice a woman toward the front of the line with an extremely bored six- or seven-year-old kid. Based on the length of the line and its slooowwww pace, I’d guess they’d been waiting at least half an hour.

They finally get up to the counter and the mother empties a few brown paper bags worth of packages and cards. The clerk weighs the items and calculates the postage like normal.

And then BOOM! All of a sudden the kid starts throwing up everywhere. The mother just calmly moves one of the empty paper bags so it catches some of the barf. And then she goes on with her post office business.

I guess once you make it to the front of the line, you aren’t giving up your spot for anything!