Suspicious Mail

Most of the year – say, 51 1/2 out of 52 weeks – I have no reason to enter the “NEXT” sanctum of my local post office.  All of the circulars and bulk mail which constitute ninety-eight percent of my mail are handily delivered to a slot on the side of my garage.  I can purchase stamps, mail packages or letters, or send something in such a way that I KNOW you got it, at my local supermarket, at the convenient Automated Postal Center, or even online.  Absolutely no reason to stand in line and check out the flyers, circulars, or shopping opportunities to buy a small teddy bear wearing a mail carrier’s uniform.

Occasionally however I receive the dreaded orange slip in my delivered mail which requires me to present myself to retrieve some item that someone wants to make sure I have received.  It’s interesting how someone determines that I need to pick up in person the Minnie Mouse ears sent from Hong Kong that I purchased for 0.99 on eBay but sending a $459.98 camera via trolls who will sneak it onto my front doorstep in the dead of night for me to find by accident is just fine.  Go figure.  I digress.

This week brought an orange slip to pick up something that I was pretty sure I had ordered but was clueless as to whether it was a fruitcake or something I actually wanted since the sender information isn’t included on the orange slip for fear it might tip me off and I would never show up.  So off to the local post office I trundled to stand in line with all of the other characters who had some sort of business there.

Standing in line at the post office is awkward.  Do you chat with the person in front of you?  About what?

“So, whatcha mailing there?”

“How about the price of stamps?”

I generally try not to stare at the person at the Automated Postal Center kiosk who is either reading every instruction out loud accompanied by interpretive dance or yelling at the machine.  Really awkward.

It used to be a lot more interesting when you could check out the Wanted posters with all of the Dillinger-esque pictures.

“Oh yeah, saw him at the grocery last week in the fruit section.”

“Wow, bad hair day.”

I’m left with examining all of the things for sale and the circulars warning about mailing hazardous materials.  Two feet above my head is a poster with teeny tiny writing and a picture of a package that clearly had been sent by my mother!  Standing on tiptoes, I could confirm that yes indeed it is EXACTLY like the packages I receive from my mom (and which I regularly have to go to this facility to retrieve).  LOTS of tape sealing it up – silver duct tape is usually her tape of choice and plenty of it.  Miscellaneous writing on it to alerts me either to contents or to the fact that it contains something she doesn’t want someone else in my household to see too early.  A mix of capital letters with my last name misspelled.  Yup.  That’s one of hers.

But wait a minute.  This is a poster educating people on how to identify a suspicious package that you should NOT ever open but instead should immediately notify authorities to retrieve and destroy.  You shouldn’t even touch it!  Fleeing is best.

I’m confused.  You’re educating ME on what a suspicious package looks like?  What you just describes looks like the packages I get from my mother all the time.   And I know that a lot of the process is automated but surely at some point in time someone in the US Postal Service actually sees these packages before they get delivered, right?

“Hey, got a package here for you with lots of tape, wires sticking out and oily splotches on it.  Sign here.  You think it is a suspicious package?  Well, golly you might be right.  Joe!  Joe!  Come on over here.  This lady thinks this is a suspicious package – whadda you think?”

Educating me on detecting suspicious packages seems a little late in the process.  And really how am I going to tell the difference between a suspicious package and a package from my mother?  I’d never know.

The danger of course is that all of the packages from my mother would be destroyed before they ever reached me.  Maybe I’ll suggest she send packages via the trolls.