What’s the last thing you got in the mail?
Certainly wasn’t 13 pounds of cocaine wrapped in cellophane, butcher paper, and peanut butter. It’s weird you would even bring that up. Are you obsessed with me? Who cares what I get in the mail? Since it wasn’t cocaine, which I have openly addressed, it could have been anything. You a cop or something? it was the crap in a box things, what is it? Cologuard?
This skit was just on last weekend, and it’s brilliant. It also hit home. Being 50, I have to get a colonoscopy. I plan to get one. I have dodged it for years, though… and here is why. It’s not the pooping (am excited to lose the weight) or the camera up my butt. Apparently, I’ll be so goofed on valium I’ll be rooting them on. No, I can’t fast for 24 hours. Don’t know how to, and am terrified to. At least let me have some protein powder? Nope. Since I am in this demographic, I was offered to take place in a study. In short, I’d get $200 cash to crap in a box and mail it off. I thought about it, it was just all too weird.
ok… what were we talking about? Post office! Stuff in the mail
Likely guitar stuff. Something simple, like strings. Why would I ship guitar strings? Do I hate the environment that much? Well, the impact probably isn’t worse than me driving my pick up truck an hour each way to get some strings. Memba… we live remotely. The nearest set of guitar strings is about an hour away… EACH way. I am much closer to the airport, though. Amazon’s fulfillment centers are adjacent to the airport. So really… this is closer and so is more eco. See, those guitar strings at guitar center also came into DIA. Then someone drove them an hour into Denver. And now you want me to drive an hour into to Denver to get them?
Oh… and what two hours do you suggest I set aside for that? I work from home, business hours. And we have amazon prime. And come on… how great is it that I push a button and tomorrow afternoon I’ll have guitar strings in my hands without setting foot off the ranch.
What’s the last thing you sent in the mail?
Certainly wasn’t $23,000 in non sequential hundreds. Holy shit cash is heavy. How do you even explain that? I told her it was dense heavy square… um… pottery samples. The gal asks “um… ok. Any stated value to the clay samples?” This is NOT the time to say “I’d say about about 23K in clay samples.” No sir, you just let that money go and trust the system.
other than that? Since I absolutely did NOT send 23K in cash overnight while dressed as Tom Hanks?
Live paychecks. Like it’s 1985 over here. For my company. Well, it’s not my company… but the company I work for. Every new hire gets a live check for their first check, even if they do direct deposit. It used to make sense to send these checks to Denver, since this is where our call center is. Since the pandemic, though, our call center is closed. We haven’t hired anyone in Denver for years. Our staff are now spread out all over the country. To simplify things, I guess… HQ still sends their checks to us. I pick them up and fedex them.
Really, though, the only thing we use our mailbox for our here is to pass stuff from neighbor to neighbor. Some postal folks really really really don’t like it when you use a mailbox as a community cubbyhole. Our postal folk don’t seem to care, which is wonderful. They are ‘rural route’. Know what that means in the postal world? A LOT. They don’t have to take the post office or civil service exam, they don’t have to wear uniforms. They don’t get a post office jeep. If you want to get into the post office, this is the shortcut that will take 2 years off the process. Apply to be a ‘rural’ carrier.
Lemme tell you how great and laid back these carriers are. Our last postal guy, who I am super sad appears to be gone, wrote down our dogs names on the lip of the mailbox flap. He brings them treats every day when he drives by. If he doesn’t see the dogs out, he’ll drop a couple dog biscuits in the mailbox with our mail. See the cool shit you are missing living in the city?
How many unread emails are in your inbox right now?
Work email? 9,949. Yup. And there might be some important stuff in there. Our company has a culture of ‘reply to all’. Every single email to anyone usually has about 6 people copied on it. and everyone replies to all. When I go to if I take a lunch, I get about 35 emails. Maybe one of them needs my attention. Every one email someone sends ends up creating about 12. As a result, all of us miss a LOT of information. I scan the email line preview in Outlook. If it doesn’t start with ‘Hey Kevin’, or ‘Kevin’ or something like that… I don’t open it.
And far from people catching on what a time suck this is. There is a guy who is pretty high up who adds more people to every email. Oh, and this is just my main inbox we are talking about. I also have 15 other emails that empty to me. 15 departments worth of emails I am copied on. If I could wave my magic wand right now and change something… rather than smite Mitch McConnel, or solve world hunger… I would strike down ‘reply to all’ with a great vengeance and furious anger those who use it
What is your most recent text message about?
Reminder for acupuncture tomorrow at 11:30am
Do you have a favorite postage stamp design?
No. wait… the forever stamp. I know that isn’t what you meant, but I’m exploiting a loophole. I have some stamps in my wallet, prolly been there a few years.
Btw, since we are talking about the post office, they are apparently 4 billion in debt. They can fix that, virtually overnight (in about 2 years). Stop Saturday delivery. They have already run the numbers. Most players agree, but here is why I didn’t happen (these discussions were started back in Bush jr’s presidency. To drop Saturdays it literally takes an act of congress. That is why it can’t, and won’t, get done. Neither side wants the other to get credit. Additionally, each side prolly wants to tack some riders on (on page 162 of 182 pages, someone will put in tiny font ‘oh and a fighter jet factory for my home district’.
I am Correct 