Tag Archives: life

The Best Macaroni and Cheese in the World

30 Dec

“The time has come”, the walrus said, “to talk of many things: of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax–of cabbages–and kings–“

and the best macaroni and cheese in the world.

It took me a few months, several pounds of macaroni, and a lot of money in cheese, but I have finally found a macaroni so wonderfully delicious that I shall deem it the best macaroni and cheese in the entire world.  

Technically, it’s the best macaroni and cheese recipe that was submitted to my Great Macaroni and Cheese Adventure post and it’s completely subjective to Dave’s and my taste.  But since we can only make conclusions from the evidence presented to us thus far in life and because I have not found a better recipe in my entire life, I can confidently conclude that there is no better dish to be served in the realm of the patriotic and cheesy than what I’m about to share with you:

Congratulations to thesinglecell, who submitted a recipe for a yummylicious pasta and cheese combination and is soon to be the proud owner of a $25 Visa Gift Card for the tip.  

There’s something Raclette does when it makes sweet, hot, oven love to heavy cream, Parmesan and sharp Cheddar that makes a gooey cheesiness so delicious you’ll swear it’s made of kitten sparkles and rainbow dust.  

This is not a picture of the macaroni I made. This is just random food porn. I'm not a food blogger; I'm just a girl in search of a dream of delicious cheesy pasta. Also, Wylio.com didn't have much to offer in the way of kitten sparkles and rainbow dust pics.

So if you’ve got an hour to kill, some money to donate toward the good cause of cheese production, and a good whisking hand, make an attempt at thesinglecell’s submission below.  I dare you to tell me rainbow dust isn’t delicious.

1/2 lb pasta of your choice, cooked and drained
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons dry mustard
5 oz. sharp cheddar, shredded
3 oz. Raclette, cubed (a white, semi-soft cow’s milk cheese… a good grocery store with a cheese bar may be your best bet)
1/4c. Parmesan, grated
1 3/4c. heavy cream
3/4c. milk
Paprika for sprinkling
 
Preheat oven to 375. Spray a 9×9″ pan with cooking spray. Pour cooked, drained pasta into 9×9″ pan.
 
Blend flour, mustard and salt together in a small bowl.
 
In a saucepan over medium-low heat, melt butter. Add flour, salt and mustard and stir until blended.
Add milk and cream, stirring or whisking until dry ingredients are dissolved and liquid is hot, but not boiling (after you pour in the milk/cream, you can increase your heat to medium if you need to).
 
Add Raclette, stirring/whisking occasionally until cheese melts. Repeat for cheddar and parmesan, stirring/whisking often so the cheese doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.
 
Pour cheese sauce over pasta; sprinkle with paprika and bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Then broil until top is golden.
 
And, um, for extra incredibleness? Fry 3-4 slices of bacon first, drain them, and then crumble them into the pasta before you put the cheese sauce in.
 
Bon appetit!

So congratulations again to thesinglecell and congratulations to all of you as well.  Because even if you didn’t win a $25 Visa Gift Card like she did, you still won a darn good recipe.  

One more post to go, ya’ll.  See you tomorrow for my 365 Project/postaday2011 sign-off. ♣

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Door Is Open; Bellydancer Is Free

29 Dec

As I write this, my 363rd post, I am sitting in the living room of an old high school friend.

She’s  not old; the relationship is.

One of the reasons I still keep her around is that when I visit her family, it’s a lot like stepping into the middle of a sitcom.  I don’t mean that in the sense that it’s an amusing family, though it is.  I mean that in the sense that a half hour ago, the three children had three separate conversations with their mother and came to three separate conclusions about when dinner would be and the logistics for how it would be accomplished.  In the midst of this confusion, I decided to order a pizza out of fear that none of the three conclusions were correct and that I would die of an empty, shriveled stomach.

Five minutes after the arguments concluded, the mother came to the door to begin dinner.  None of the conclusions (dinner would be more than a half hour away) were correct and as a result, the pizza delivery guy came just two minutes before her mother shouted that dinner was ready.

I promptly hid the pizza in the living room out of fear.

Before dinner fired up, I was entertained by Betty (my friend’s sister), who decided she needed to get her exercise in for the day and resorted to On Demand guided exercise on the television.  Her choice: some sort of Karma Sutra Sensual Healing, which she gave us all the pleasure of enduring for the first fifteen minutes that she took it seriously.   The rest was done in fast-forward, which was significantly less awkward and probably a far more effective workout.

What I love about this sitcom house is that it’s always been absurd.  I can’t remember a single time I’ve visited that everyone wasn’t yelling at each other at some point about something completely ridiculous.  I can’t remember a time I didn’t end up on a chair in the living room, shaking my head.  And I also can’t remember a time that I ever had to knock before I entered or that anyone looked shocked that I was there.  

It’s wonderful to have a place in the world like that outside of your family: where you never know what to expect but you know that you can be absent for a long time only to return and find that nothing has really changed. 

So hey: it’s been a while since we’ve talked.  Midnight is also fast-approaching and I’m on a postaday deadline without a well-constructed ending in sight.  

So where is your place in the world where you know the door is always open? ◊

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The Holidays Make Me Want to Elope

28 Dec

 

Holiday vacation has convinced me of the need to elope.

I can’t tell you how many times in the past several days I have been asked the date, time, and specific logistics surrounding a marriage that has, in fact, not yet been discussed by Dave and I.  There were a slew of examples, but suffice it to say that the straw that broke the Jackie’s back was when my 12-year-old cousin was visiting us today and said “You’re the outsider.  Everyone is married and has a baby.  You aren’t even married yet.“

Emphasis hers.

As you may imagine, this came as the caboose on a very long train of marriage questions I endured throughout the holiday vacation.  In a rather comedic turn of events, I realized for the first time this past weekend that Dave has a slew of grandmothers.  His family believes that you divorce a person, not a family, and thus has continued to welcome all once-members with open arms in a rather unique display of love.  As a result, he has no less than six grandmothers.  In fact, when I asked him to confirm my count, he replied, “yeah, that sounds about right”, indicating that perhaps he has even lost track.

And those are just his.

Think about that.  Really think about what it would be like to repeat the conversation you have with your grandmother each holiday several different times with several different grandmothers of varying moods, characters, and sizes.  How two people can be dating for four years and still not tied the knot eludes most anyone over the age of 60 and it’s bound to come up eventually.  At one point following a substantial intake of wine, I recall having my entire wedding planned before my very eyes.  Something like two locations, two states, and a neighbor’s backyard.  I also recall the words “pig roast”.

I don’t even have a ring on my finger.

Not that I mind that my hand is sans shiny bauble – I rather enjoy living like Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.  Dave and I tend to think of it as if we have our entire lives to be married and our entire lives to have a kid, but only right now to be dating.  And we rather like it at the moment.  Anything further isn’t really anyone’s business in my opinion.  But nonetheless, opinions come in the form of pig roasts.

And so I’ve decided that when the time comes, David and I might be better off eloping.  Brides have a hard enough time settling in to their wants for the day without catering to others in medium-sized families.  Can you imagine the tug-of-war to be had with a family large enough to have an indefinite number of grandmothers roaming the earth?  Besides, I’d say the cost of even a modest wedding would easily hit a price point over that of say, a trip to Barcelona. We could hop a plane, do the deed, hang around for the honeymoon, and come back to whatever backyard barbecues anyone pleases, so long as they’re the ones handling the stress and cost.

I think it sounds like a solid plan.  Of course, now I’ve gone and planned everything out without the shiny bauble to provoke it. 

It appears the grandmothers have won after all. ◊

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2011: The Year I Sucked at Lots of Things

27 Dec

You know that moment when you’re watching a television show and you realize that the entire episode is going to be a flashback/homage to past episodes?

Then you know what today’s Lollipop Tuesday will feel like.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, folks.  It’s the last of the year.  The last – the final – the end of the road!  In my ideal world, I would have written this post from a hot air balloon ride – the perfect cherry on my Lollipop Tuesday sundae a year in the making.  But I didn’t go on a hot air balloon ride.  It turns out they don’t do amateur blogger discounts.

So it’s all over. Man, what will I do with all the time I used to scour the local paper for listings or drive hours outside the city to explore some strange activity?  Maybe I’ll miss it so much that I’ll continue in 2012.  Maybe I’ll give up on it entirely and look back at 2011 fondly as the year I tried a bunch of things that made me want to vomit from anxiety.  I’m betting on the latter.

At any rate, it’s been a heckuva ride.  When I started Lollipop Tuesdays this year, I had two goals in mind.  One was to break up the monotony of postaday by having a weekly series that folks could tune into if they didn’t care for the ranting and raving of my borderline psychotic mind on other days of the week.  The other was to challenge myself in a way that would force me to grow, whether I liked the journey or not.  The concept was simple: seek out something new that I would inevitably suck at (hence the lollipop/sucker reference in the term). 

I remember after a few Lollipop Tuesday adventures, I began to hate the fact that I ever started them.  I think it was right around the time that I said yes to taking a pole-dancing class and then realized I had no way to get out of it.  Sometimes I really despised conquering the unknown, seeking out locations posted on flyers and wandering into places having no idea what to expect or what would be asked of me. 

But that was the entire point.

I’ve convinced myself I hate movies that I never actually sat down to watch.  I’ve waited so long to try new things that they build up in my head as insurmountable.  For a long time, I was content to note that I’m awkward and inwardly and have no interest in anything that makes me uncomfortable.   So 2010 Jackie saw to it that 2011 Jackie would be forced to change.  

I’d like to think that I have.  I’d like to think that these experiences have helped my anxiety and attitude toward new experiences and that I’m a more open-minded and daring person than I was before.  I don’t know if any of that is necessarily true – I suppose it comes down to what I do and how I react when I’m not held accountable to post about it later on.

One thing I have definitely begun to stew on is the idea of a Bucket List (a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket).  I think Bucket Lists are fantastic in theory, but in action I don’t really know too many folks who are actively seeking to accomplish the things on them.   There isn’t much point in keeping track of a bunch of good intentions that you hope to cash in on when you’re too old and penniless to make it happen.  I think Bucket Lists should be more like To Do lists – we should set out to accomplish them as soon as we are able.  

If everyone just committed to a Lollipop Tuesday every so often, they might look back when they’re old and penniless and realize that they don’t have a whole lot left that they haven’t already tried.  Maybe in time, Lollipop Tuesdays can push out the idea of the Bucket List and we can be people who are constantly trying new things, not people who hope to someday accomplish them.

Here’s to 2012 and whatever new adventures it brings.  May we be open to the daring and unknown. ◊

Have you seen all fifty Lollipop Tuesday posts?  If not (or if you’d like to brush up for old time’s sake), check out the “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” header at the top of this page.  Or just click here. 

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4 Notes on Better Gift Card Giving

26 Dec

I’m going to go ahead and venture into uncharted waters here.  I’m going to explore the unexplored – to encroach upon indecency.  I want to talk about gift card etiquette.

Let me start by saying that gift cards are a lovely thing.  They’re the perfect gift, if well-employed.  Being given a well-considered and well-delivered gift card for a special celebration can provoke a grown man to pee himself with glee (also known as Glee Pee or #gleepee).  In return for their generosity, the buyer typically receives discounts or a free gift card of a smaller amount at their favorite stores.  Thus, when properly employed, the gift card is the gift that keeps on giving.  When not properly employed, it’s a last-minute, lazy gift.  While still appreciated, it struggles to leave an impact.

So here are some of what I believe are useful gift card etiquette tips.  Somewhere out there, I’m sure there’s an incredibly official and highly lauded version of this already that the world has agreed on. If such a thing exists, I hereby declare my willful ignorance.  I am the original and only source for final consultation on these matters.

Be Sure to Notate the Amount on the Card. There are several ways to do this. You can simply write in a card what the amount is,

This is the look of grateful confusion.

along with a personal message.  You can write it in Sharpie on the back of the gift card itself.  Most stores have made this easy on you by setting up the world’s easiest Ad Lib so you can stop scratching your head on how to approach the issue.  “Happy Shopping from __________.  The amount on your card is _______________ and can be used in store or online.”  Or if you’re being totally awesome and shopping small business, you’re dealing in paper gift certificates and this is already handled for you (one more reason to shop small).  No matter which way you prefer, please don’t overlook this detail.  Though we’re thankful for any gift of any size, the difference between the way you thank someone for a $5 gift card and a $500 gift card are significantly different.   It’s like a piece of candy and a car, folks.  Give us a little guidance.

Do Your Homework. Now, I may be a little old school in this thinking, but I’m a firm believer that any gift that is given should be given with great thought.  There are some occasions which call for gifts of light and casual measure; hostess gifts, for example, are the kind that show appreciation for someone without making a personal commentary.  But when you’re buying birthday, anniversary, or holiday gifts, the occasion calls for some forethought.  You can say just as much with a gift card as with a hand-selected gift if you just put the same amount of thought into it.  Consider the stores your recipient likes to shop at.  Extra points if you pick a place the person would like to shop at, but doesn’t do so frequently because of the price points of that store.  If you give me a $50 gift card to a shop I usually can’t justify spending money in, you’ve just given me the best guilt-free shopping trip ever.  More bonus points if you check out the store’s price levels beforehand to gauge an appropriate amount.  a $10 gift card to a store that carries $250 shirts probably isn’t the best choice for a personal and impactful gift.

Get Creative. Consider grouping cards together or selecting a gift certificate for a  particularly great location.  For example, by purchasing a gift certificate for the movie theater and a gift certificate for a restaurant nearby, you’re giving someone the gift of an evening out.  Or if you give someone a voucher to a location near where they vacation or have always wanted to, you’ve just reminded them that you know what they love and given them a reason to go visit it.  Or even just coming up with clever labels for the way you give the gift (e.g. give them a gift card to a liquor store and a bake shop and label them “naughty” and “nice”).  Anything you can do to show that you didn’t just pick a gift card lazily off the kiosk is one step closer to a meaningful gift.

Be a Better Recipient. This is by no means required, but it sure does go a long way to show appreciation by sending the giver a text, call, or casual note mentioning a second thank you for the gift and what it was you just purchased with it.  I bought my brother and sister-in-law a gift certificate to an upscale restaurant for Christmas.  Ten months later, I got a text from him thanking me for a great anniversary dinner.  It’s a fantastic feeling to be thought of and to see how the person chose to use it.

So there you have it: four things I think everyone should bear in mind with gift cards.  I’d even go so far as to say that if you don’t want to consider the above when you’re giving a gift card or certificate, you might as well just stuff money in the card and scribble your name.

It will leave the same impact, but require less of you. ♣

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Oatmeal and a Dream

25 Dec

My Christmas present this year came in the form of a dream.

Bear with me: I’ll be relatively brief.

I had been hired as an intern for an incredibly rude and demanding woman.  It was supposed to be an elite position – one that people fight to get.  So all the new hires were in her apartment, all dressed exactly the same, and all hanging on her every word.  After she dished out the first task, I was feeling pretty angsty and decided to go for a run in the hallway.

Please note: running has invaded my dreams.

But even running made me feel nervous inside, so instead I decided to prop myself up against a wall in the hallway and play with some sticky finger frogs.  Not sure where those came from – I think the kids toy fish pond at my family reunion when I was 8 years old.   I say outside the door and watched intern after intern rush out her apartment door all haggard and hurried, hoping for their lives that they wouldn’t make a mistake.

After I’d had enough of my finger frog fun, I ventured back into her apartment and slipped in unnoticed.  She whipped her head around, thinking of her next task and demanded that I carry it out.  I took a nice big breath, grabbed my stuff, and told her I’d rather not. She was confused and asked what exactly I thought I was doing.  I told her I decided this wasn’t for me and I was going to split.

And so I did.

It was epic.  It was like the end of The Devil Wears Prada, when Anne Hathaway decides that she wants to get back on track with her life and away from the pressure and stress from Meryl Streep.  Glorious indeed. 

I woke up feeling fantastic.  Today begins the first true day of vacation.  I have quit my job in my dreams and I have been liberated by my imagination.  Here’s to one full week of no stress, no angst, no pressure.

Merry Christmas, all.  May you find a way to escape your everyday stress and simply enjoy the day. ♣♣

Today’s chuckle shall be brought to you by The Oatmeal.  If you don’t follow The Oatmeal, or you think I’m talking about a food and not a web comic, you should consider changing your ways and forever brightening your life by paying it a visit.   So here’s a little Christmas cheer for one and all: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/christmas
 

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Please Stop the Holiday Commercials. Please.

24 Dec

It's not Christmas until you get your kid a toy that makes them wet their pants

I’ve been away from television for quite some time.  But as it’s the holidays and most folks just sit around in front of the television until it’s time to carry out an obligatory tradition or two, I have no choice but be subjected to the doom tube.

Today I was introduced to the Wuggle Pets commercial.  Then some stupid dance Skechers that used ballerinas to sell what looks like a running shoe.  Then I saw a woman purposefully knock all her spices out of her cabinet so that the narrator could show me the solution to her intentional hand spasms. And then I gouged out my eyeballs with a dinner fork.

After you’ve been disconnected from the world of flashing lights and blaring voices, it’s a little shocking to be around it again.  There are all sorts of pop culture whosits and whatsists that I don’t understand and advertisements that are so incredibly stupid it makes me want to write a letter to corporate headquarters all over the nation.  Of course, this is really what I always wanted and the very reason I got rid of cable. For a while there, seeing a commercial for Wuggle Pets would have been ordinary to me.

Now it looks like certain death.

So I’m glad I’ve made that transition successfully.  The only unfortunate consequence is that now when I have to sit in other people’s living rooms for a significant amount of time, I get incredibly annoyed and upset by the yelling and screaming to buy products, the stupid reality shows that have people hooked (they’re scripted, people.  scripted.), and I mourn for the fact that I’m not doing anything constructive with my time. We could be playing board games or talking about life or going on an adventure together or volunteering in a soup kitchen or wrapping presents for kids in need or anything, really, except staring at a group of overexcited child actors freak out about a machine that lets them stuff their own stuffed animals. 

I know this is not a typical reaction.  I know.  I need to accept that Wuggle Pets are part of my reality and that turning a blind eye to them doesn’t mean they stop existing.  If I can just hold out for two more days, Christmas-oriented advertising will be off the playlist until next fall.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Try not to gouge out eyes with silverware. ♣

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‘Tis the Season for Bad Decorations

23 Dec

‘Tis the season for white trash decorating!

One thing I love about Dave’s hometown is that  it’s almost exactly like my hometown except his is in New York and mine is in Pennsylvania.  It’s quite a bit more prosperous than mine was as well.  It’s kind of like his hometown is what mine would be if mine hadn’t shriveled up and died of weary old age years ago. It at least feels like home in a way, even when it’s not really home.  So on the way to his parents’ house for Christmas, I got a real dose of my own hometown loveliness: white trash decorating.

You know what I’m talking about.  Little random crap figures in the yard, Christmas lights that look like someone had a seizure in the middle of throwing them on the bush, and (Lord help us all), those huge, plastic, inflatable snow globe things.  Half of them have been there all year.   The other half are thrown in for good measure at Christmastime. 

Every time i see them, they’re only half-inflated and drowning in a sea of 10 others scattered about the sad, sad lawn.  

This is best case scenario here. Take half those bush lights and toss them to the wind, suck half the air out of the inflatables, and knock a few things over. Then we're in business.

Christmas spirit, indeed.

I’m not really sure why they bother.  Who looks out on a lawn of half blown up life-size snow globes, a few crooked cardboard stands, and a weathered sign that says “North Pole” and thinks they’re doing their part to spread Christmas spirit?   Of course, maybe it’s self-serving.  Maybe it’s a matter of tradition and they don’t think it looks  nice either but it’s what they grew up with so they keep doing it.  

Can you help me understand this?  Are you perhaps one of these people? Why do you do it?  Why do you lug all of that stuff out of your attic, basement, of what-else-have-you only to blow them up halfway with no semblance of order or preconceived strategy?  

I’ve thought about knocking on the door of one of these homes/shacks/trailers and asking why.  I’d be all sly about it and compliment them on the lovely job they’ve done. I’m sure they’re super happy with it and will be glad to tell me all about it.  Or maybe it will just be some guy in his underwear who complains about how his wife told him to do it so he just threw them all out there willy nilly like.  Maybe half-inflated snow globes are just a sign of struggling matrimony in small towns.

I think I probably cracked the code right there. ♣

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The Home Stretch

22 Dec

This would be a lot more satisfying if I had the other months shown too. Pretend there are 11 more of these.

I was going to write a post today about how I was away from my computer until now, driving toward the northerly patches of New York.  I was going to talk about how I checked my email with great excitement only to find Groupon, Barack Obama, and Living Social.  They aren’t even interested in me.  They just want me to be interested in them.  And so on and so forth until I whine about how I expected to be more important and am constantly let down, like when you turn your phone off all day and when you turn it back on, you’re somehow still kind of disappointed that you don’t have a lot of badgering to reply to.

But I already wrote about all that before.

Isn’t that crazy? I genuinely forgot all about it.  Oh.  Maybe that’s because this is my 356th daily post in a row and that’s the official number of topics I can write before I loop back again.   Now we know.

Oh yeah – hey! I only have, like, nine posts left.  NINE.  I’m getting a lot of “hey how do you feel”, etc.  And with the holidays coming up, I’m sure that my frequent obligations to have human contact will result in that happening more often.  So because I’m already socially awkward enough without people approaching me, allow me to squelch as much of it as possible right now by saying it feels like pressure.  Not pressure to write, exactly.  I felt that for the first three months but after I realized that I had to write whether it was crap or not, I just kind of let it go and wrote whatever I could squeeze out.  Some people call that giving up.  I call it stream-of-consciousness.  I like my term better.  

When I say it feels like pressure, I mean pressure, like, not to die.  Or get terribly ill.  Or break my hands. Or do anything that would make me miss a day and thus require me to start all over again. If I’m repeating post ideas at number 356, can you imagine what a load of fantastical junk 2012 would bring?  Honestly, how many more times can I write about my cats before you unsubscribe?   Maybe twice.  And I’m probably going to cash in on those two this week.

There is perhaps a slight bit of pressure in the area of writing quality, just because I started my official holiday vacation yesterday at 8pm and won’t return to reality until January 3rd: a full two days after my daily posting is shut down.  Every day until then is going to be filled with food, family, sleeping, shenanigans, and fantasizing about never having to return to work again.  

It’s unlikely that my posts will be any good. 

But let’s be honest: you’re not going to read.  Some of you are going to read because you’ve got this whole I-haven’t-missed-a-Jackie-post-yet thing going.  And that’s super flattering and I’d really like to send you a warm puppy in the mail so you can understand how that makes me feel inside.  But aside from you few, the majority of my readers will disappear into the land of egg nog and Auld Lang Syne, never to even see me cross the finish line.

So maybe we can strike a mutually beneficial deal here.  I’ll try not to feel pressured to write anything of substance these next 9 days, and you, in turn, can feel no pressure to tune in to read what is bound to be pretty terrible. 

Deal.

Wow – seriously though.  Nine days.

Good thing – I feel carpal tunnel coming on. ♣

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Dear Post Office: This Is Why You’re Failing

21 Dec

Ah, graffiti. The fronds of malcontent.

Okay, to be fair, I’m sure you’re failing for lots of reasons.  A lot of them don’t have anything to do with you.  Online banking, email, and a general love and desire for more trees in the world among them.  Maybe something to do with the economy.  Maybe.  But I don’t know anything about economics.   All I know is you manage to complicate the shipping process beyond all human comprehension, and there is not one single post office in my area that doesn’t have a hell demon working the front desk when I visit.

Ever.

You see, I’m the kind of person that accepts that certain branches might just have a sour staff.  Perhaps they’re overworked or understaffed or generally malcontent.  Maybe everyone in the office is really quite lovely but the person who works the shift that I always chance to visit during is just a grumplepuss.  There are lots of things that could align themselves on any particular day that lead to an unsatisfactory visit. I accept these as challenges in the business place for which I cannot possible hold you accountable.  Sometimes there’s a bad egg that gets through the production process.  I understand. Really.  But I have visited no less than three offices in and around my neighborhood and not a single one has a pleasant person at the front desk.

Ever.  Do you hear me? Ever.

Listen: my mom works at the post office.  She’s been a loyal worker bee for well over a decade.  Because of this, I am wont to go easy on the post office folk. They have a rough gig.   That’s why I know the answers to their questions in advance (no, I’m not shipping a ferret, a bottle of  arsenic, or a box of anthrax, yes I do want delivery confirmation but not insurance), do my very best to be well-prepared before I make it to the counter, and when there’s a line, I remind myself that the post office has a lot of business to tend to during the day – most of which happens far behind the front counter.

I even try to be an advocate for the post office, and when I have a poor experience I go to usps.com and let you know.  But you don’t really want to improve.  I know this because when I go online and detailed my experience earlier this year when there were three people at the front desk, only one of whom was doing any work, the other two who were laughing and discussing procedures for Passports, and the one woman who was working was loudly complaining about her work conditions while a line containing half my neighborhood was bending out the door, you wrote back some garbledy gook about how the post office is busy and has peak hours and you’re doing your best.

That’s a bit defensive, post office, don’t you think?  You see, I want to be constructive.  I want to help you solve your problems.  I want to help you understand that when people can make the choice to go online to do all their business (or UPS, or FedEx, who you yourself do business with), they expect you to treat them well when they pay you a visit.   But I can’t help you if you’re in denial.

So let’s get real: ya’ll need to get some better customer service.

I still have to call my mother to figure out what ships where for how much and how big it can be.  Or what kind of paper it has to be wrapped in.  Or what happens if I answer the hazardous/liquid/fragile question with a yes.   You’ve got a very complicated system going on.

Now, I know you recognized this for a moment and attempted to put in self-service package centers in some of your lobbies, and I really appreciate that.  You also did the “if it fits, it ships” campaign with the flat rate boxes.  But let’s be honest: while that’s a good deal if I’m going to send a shoebox full of heavy metals from East Coast to West, it’s not the most cost-effective option if I want to send, say, a stuffed animal.

So why don’t you just have a person in the lobby to assist with these sorts of things? Why can’t I just put a banana on the counter and ask you to ship it for me? I don’t care if I have to pay a service fee.  I don’t care if I have to answer questions about the origin of my banana and my intent in shipping it.  I’d be so thrilled to talk to someone who is pleasant and wants to help me figure out how to get my banana from one place to the next in the most cost-effective, logical manner possible that I’d happily stand in line if you were understaffed, overworked, or – say – going bankrupt.

You know what? Not even a week ago I had a friend tweet about how she stood in line for a very long time just to get a book of stamps.  She didn’t know she could go online to order, get them from a brochure, or have them delivered to her by her postal carrier.

Hey: you know what you have to do.  You know what the problems are.  We’re confused, you’re over-complicated.  We’re busy and you don’t have the time for us.  We want to give you our money and keep you going, but not if you’re going to give us attitude and tell us how much you hate your situation while we do it.  So just put some smiling, patient faces at that counter, give us a shipping specialist with a heart of gold, and start spending your time educating people about how easy it is to order stamps from home so they get the heck out of line.

I’ve got stuff to mail. ♣

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