Before I proceed, I should mention that the Postal Service is my favorite quasi-government agency, and that I think the politicians and pundits who are working to make its mission impossible are either crazy or so cynical as to cross the line into clinical sociopathy.

Having said that, last week I stood in line at the "Embarcadero" branch in downtown San Francisco to mail a small box of Christmas swag to my old boss and mentor at Flatline, Comatose, Torpor & Drowse, now retired these eighteen years past. I had repurposed a small box last transported by FedEx, and bearing that corporation's chop silkscreened repeatedly on the corrugated 2-ply cardboard surface. I had been at pains as I always am to remove or obliterate all visible barcodes, but after waiting almost forty minutes for a clerk, I was then advised that the USPS would not defile itself by handling a parcel bearing the Mark of the Beast, and sent to the back of the line (actually, directed toward a surface at the other end of the room where there was a roll of 2" wide "Priority Mail" tape which I employed to cover up the offending identity, and thence to the back of the line).

I am afraid I am going to make an offensive generalization* here, but in my experience over the past four decades and change dealing with various bureaucracies, it has been consistently the case, at the academic, municipal, state or federal levels, that if the minor functionary is (A) female, (B) conspicuously obese, (C) not in the first blush of youth, and (D) black, then appeals to reason and humanity will likely meet with an implacable refusal to deviate one whit from official procedure (and the more minor the functionary, the greater the rigor with which the procedures are enforced). I feel certain that the skinny Chinese guy at the next counter (whom I've dealt with before) would have handed me a role of tape, or even applied it himself.

Well, fortunately I work largely without adult supervision, and no one noticed upon my return that I'd been away from my desk for a big part of the afternoon. I still heart the Postal Service, but I wish some of its minions would remember that a little PR might pay political dividends in these parlous times. This doesn't make me want to vote my Inner Republican, but it might push weaker-minded yuppies over the edge.

cordially,

*A Google search suggests that this demographic may be over-represented in the popular perception when it comes to auto registration or driver's license renewals.

...at the mandarinate courtesy with which I treat almost all of my fellow human beings in meatspace. It's true that the other day when a woman in the corner park got disagreeable about the dog ("Put your dog on the leash! Put your dog on the leash! It's the law!") I finally responded, after extended suavity didn't do the trick, "Bite me, lady." I could have added that just as the sign prohibited off-leash dogs, it also prohibited the alcohol in the "Colt 45 Malt Liquor" she was swilling.

Extreme courtesy served me very well in my youth when I was undertaking a particularly tricky series of negotiations with the University of California, with which I'd contrived to put myself in a very bad odor, with the end of rehabilitating myself. At this period the gatekeepers were principally white, desiccated female departmental secretaries in whose power it lay effortlessly to prohibit my access to the poobahs whose signatures I desperately required, and were very susceptible to a combination of good manners and I-know-how-difficult-your-job-is with a dollop of and-so-few-people-appreciate-it. Not as easy as it sounds: you can't spread it too thick.

I had little else going for me at nineteen, a year I spent homeless, but I summoned up powers of persuasion that secured the rest of my life and career. The Post Office, after that, is a piece of cake

cordially,