UPS Sucks

Christmas is in the air, in the blogosphere...and were I plugged into the rest of the world no doubt it would be on the radio and television. All those awful carols, sung to a finely wrought travesty. All those manic, fake smiles of people with too many things and not enough free time to use them all.

So far I've managed all my shopping online, except for one heavy present for The Boy that I schlepped home myself -- or rather, the Baron did -- as I couldn't imagine the postal lady lugging that thing to the door.

Let us praise the Post Office, which comes down our long driveway and toots to let us know they've arrived before coming to the porch with our packages. The postal lady clomps up the stairs in her boots, wearing an apron under her heavy sweater and a smile as she hands over the mail. She only comes down the drive if there are packages so these days I see her almost every day. And inevitably she'll tell me of the latest perfidy of the United Parcel Service.

Let us boo United Parcel Service, which ties our packages to trees, or leaves them abandoned on the side of the driveway and hopes we notice their presence. They (illegally) hang them off the mailbox on the road, or if the package is too big, they walk across the road and dump the thing on the porch of the white house.

Now these drivers are familiar with this territory. They know no one lives in the white house. It belongs to the descendants of the owners, all twelve of them — descendants, that is, not owners — so unless someone notices a package on the porch…well, too bad. They’ve ruined a few things that way.

Things have gotten so bad that we’re collecting the pictures to send to the district manager. UPS must think it’s a government agency. It sure acts like one. And the post office seems to have traded places.

Someday, you will hear the story of the blind postmistress in the tiny post office near the river, not too far from here. Why that place hasn’t closed is anyone’s guess. Probably because the post office box users would have to travel another twenty miles to get their mail.