So, today I shipped out a few items from late payers on eBay (look to the left to see some of my auctions).
Now, any time that I can ship out during normal post office hours is a good thing, since the local multi-shipping place charges a hefty surcharge for the convenience of staying open past normal work hours. *gasp* Open when real people aren’t at work? Who’da thunk?
Anyway. The closest post office is a small counter in the back of a gift shop in the shopping center of a “rich people” golf course rental community. It’s mostly retirees, and so even when there’s a line, there’s generally plenty of patience and often even friendliness, which is a pleasant change from other post offices.
So imagine my shock when I arrived to find myself 7th in line! At first I thought I had merely stumbled into the only rush hour of the month, until I heard the conversation up at the counter.
“But she no need the stamp. She just need envelope and stamp. Give me refund!”
“I can’t do that, we don’t refund postage. Besides, it’s two months old.”
This was repeated for about 10 minutes, while I, and one other woman stifled our giggles, and the rest waited patiently. This was occasionally interspersed with “I can’t argue with you all day, there are customers waiting to be served.” and “I am customer too! She no need this stamp…”
After that, two people got out of line, and several minutes later than that, one woman from the line finally went up, tapped the woman on the shoulder and said “She’s not going to change her mind- you might as well just go to the downtown post office and ask for your refund there”. Then she asked how much the stamp was for- you could tell that she was intending to just give the woman the money until the complainer told her it was over $16.
It took 15-20 minutes until the combination of the woman from the line, and a guy from the pharmacy finally convinced her that the refund could not be given there, and that if she wanted a refund she’d have to take it up with the main PO in the area.
Perhaps you just had to be there, but I wanted to document this so that I can use it in one of my novels.