October 06, 2005
The US Post Office As
The US Post Office
As the Official Planning Department here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” has recently informed us, it has been some time since we offered our mammoth readership a textbook example of obloquy and bile. For some time now, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” in addition to being embarrassingly delinquent about announcing the winner of our Official Worst Bumper Sticker Contest, haven’t served up a traditional drubbing. It seems as if it’s been years since we picked a subject and spent a “post” hectoring it.Until, that is to say, now. In today’s humble “post,” we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have returned to our roots. It’s kind of like John Cougar Mellencamp going “unplugged,” though hopefully not as irksome.
No effete navel-gazing today. No vapid self-reflection. No sir. On the contrary: We are psyching ourselves up for an old-fashioned beat-down.
To this end, we have picked a perfect subject of contumely—the US Post Office. Well nigh every American citizen has reason to hate this feculent organ of our federal government. It’s enough to make a Communist a tried-and-true free-marketer. Let’s just say that the editorial board at the International Socialist Review, their love for government waste notwithstanding, would prefer to use Fed Ex.
Standing in line at the Post Office must be one of the most vertiginous experiences in modern America. It’s not as bad as listening to rap “music,” but it comes close. Ineluctably the line at the Post Office is suitably long to make a Russian peasant woman despair. And no wonder: It’s tough to get to lots of customers when your one employee is a narcoleptic boob who works in slow motion.
Soon before we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” make our way to the front of the Post Office line, there is always some sort of disaster. Some errant chucklehead wants to mail his pet iguana to Alaska, and this causes great consternation among the Post Office crew. Should he check the “reptile” box on the form, or will “mammal” suffice? These are the quotidian irritants that make a trip to the Post Office unbearable.
And then there’s the little matter of mail delivery. As a staff of over 250 people, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have lived at our fair share of residences. Yet informal polling—and informal poling—around the office water cooler suggests that none of us has ever received his mail earlier than 12:00 pm.
Think about this for a minute: Not one single solitary one of us has ever inhabited an establishment that gets morning mail. Not a one.
What the heck are those lazy mail carriers doing all morning? As far as we can determine, they start sorting the mail at around 5:30 am. So what gives?
At the current headquarters of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” our literacy-challenged mailwoman delivers our packages around 6:00 pm. Since when do government employees work that late? This incompetent dipstick makes Slowpoke Rodriguez seem fast by comparison.
In fact, as a result of her bothersome sluggishness, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” may be the only people in history to go postal on a postman.
