Yesterday while I was running errands I drove past the post office in the late afternoon and decided that I would be making my trip there in the morning to avoid all the people. So my brilliant idea was to go this morning.

I left home about 10:00, a little later than I’d thought, but that’s about how I go. There was a line there, but it wasn’t too long. I was planning on using the Automated Postal Center anyway. There was only one guy there and he was just waiting for it to finish (although it was taking a bit longer to think about what it was doing than normal).

Then it was my turn. This was going to be great. I was going to be in and out of the post office and on to my other errands and back home in time for the visiting teachers to come. Yea!

I put my first package on the scale, told the machine where I wanted it to go, that it wasn’t hazardous material, that I needed it to print me the small version of the stamp, and gave it my credit card information to pay for it. And then it printed only the very top of the stamp and not the rest of it.

Great. So now I’m going to have to talk to someone at the desk anyway. “Oh well,” I thought, “I’ll just show them my receipt when I’m finished and we’ll take care of it.” And I put my second package on the scale. I was going to need to buy two books of stamps as well for our Christmas cards.

I told the machine the second package wasn’t hazardous material and where I wanted it to go. And it told me to please wait a moment.

Several moments, and comments from the line that was moving at a good pace, later, a kind person in line (who ended up leaving before me, and wasn’t there when I got there) went to the desk and told them the machine was stuck. They got someone with official looking keys (it takes putting two keys in the machine at the same time to get it to open) to come help me out. All she could do was open it up, shut it off, and send me straight to the special window. The lady at the special window put stamps on both of my packages, gave me credit for what the machine had already charged me, and I was on my way (without my books of stamps, at that point I decided I’d just worry about them later).

And the Automated Postal Center at our post office was probably broken for at least the rest of the morning if not the rest of the day.

I was able to do three of my other errands before running home so I’d be there for the visiting teachers (which included accidentally running into Brett at Taco Bell, the guy behind me in line there thought that was real funny). After my visiting teachers left I went back out to another post office (figured I had a reputation at the first one now) and was able to get stamps and I stopped at a bank on the way home to deposit a check.

So all in all, a productive day. I got all my errands checked off and I broke a post office (that wasn’t on my list of things to do today, just in case you were wondering).