I don't know what it is about buying stamps at the post office that seems to so annoy and sometimes enrage postal clerks, but I have hardly ever had a good experience with it.  I am willing to allow, as always, that "maybe it's just me".  It could just be that on the relatively rare occasions I have wanted that special stamp the stars have been aligned just so.  Maybe if I purchased stamps more often I would find I had fewer bad experiences with it. Or maybe there really is an anti-philatelist streak amongst postal clerks?  Hmm?



Nah.  It's probably just me.  There's an anti-me streak amongst postal clerks. 

Buying stamps has actually become a weird phobia of mine (like the fear of on-screen car crashes whenever someone on TV or in a movie is driving and not watching the road, which started with Six Feet Under). 

My fear of buying stamps started back in '03.  I was crashing with Sully in JP for the summer, and looking for a job.  I had this cover letter and résumé I was sending out. I'd phoned the prospective employer earlier to try and figure out who to address it to, since I didn’t want to write ‘Dear Sir/Madam,’ or ‘To Whom it May Concern,’ which everybody knows is the last line they’ll read.

I got HR and they were most unhelpful, as HR always is.

The guy was like, "most people just write 'To Whom it May Concern.'"

"And do most people get the job?" I asked.

But lacking a better method of getting the information I just addressed the cover letter "To Whom it May Concern," and had done with it. I mean, fuck it, fuck them, fuck everything. I knew I wasn't gonna get the job anyway, and I was in that hateful, fatalistic mood job-hunting puts you in, where you're just sending out résumés for spite.  Fuck you!  Here's my fucking résumé! Fuck off!

You know what I'm talking about.  It's like screaming into the void.  The big ol' circular file of existence, where everything, including résumés, go in the end. 

And you get these strange ideas in your head, like that the personal touch of a stamp instead of one of those awful machine-generated bar-code thingies will set you apart.  And because you're unemployed and have too much time on your hands you'll stand in line at the post office for half an hour deluding yourself that it matters.  It's either that or sit at home and masturbate yourself into a stupor. 

So there I was in line for, like, twenty minutes already, trying to think of a way to ask for a first-class stamp so as not to piss off the clerk. Because if they have to open up that drawer with the big book of stamps in it, they get all huffy for some reason.  They do.  Try it sometime.  I dare you.  And don't be all extra nice about it, just ask like normal.  See what happens.

You have to be strong.  There's an intern in my office who always comes up to you and starts apologizing for whatever she's about to ask you.  And it goes on and on until you're about to stuff her in the circular file, and then it's something like, "can I borrow your stapler?"  Now that you've wasted fifteen minutes of my time pre-apologizing for wasting it on something that will take you half a minute to do?  Don't be like her.  It doesn't help.

Remember: politeness isn't about wasting people's time apologizing for wasting their time, no matter how obsequious and toadying, cringing and sniveling and spineless you are about it — it's about not wasting their time in the first place. Politeness is acknowledging the necessity of social roles.  Politeness allows us to get things done without anyone's feelings getting hurt.  That's what it's for, bitches.  Make a note.

Anyway.  Back at the post office on Centre Street, I finally get up to the counter, and ask the postal clerk for a stamp — like a stamp stamp.  He sees I've got a regular old business envelope with a business address typed on it — not handwritten, mind you.  His eyes narrow to slits, and I can tell he's thinking: "why's this douchebag need a special stamp for that ordinary envelope?"   

He heaved an irritated sigh and opened the drawer like it was this great, huge affair.  Like he had to go into The Vault, or something.  He slammed the ratty binder on the counter, opened it up, and without even asking me if I wanted flowers or kittens or astronauts or hearts, without showing me any of the stamps in his binder, he ripped one out and stuck it on — BAM! — like that.

"Anything else?" he said, with a fuck-you smirk.

I got a brief last look at my envelope and the stamp before he flipped it  with an expert little flick of the wrist into the outgoing mail bin behind him where it would soon be on the road to oblivion.  The stamp had ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’ emblazoned on it in big, ugly bubble-letters.  

Nice.

True story.

(Sometimes I feel like my life is an episode of Louie — best little show on TV today, by the way.)

Anyway, that's how that particular phobia started. 

I had been into my new post office several times (although nowadays I usually use the mail room at work), which is manned by a cadre of lesbian clerks (another phobia, for another time), and things had generally gone smoothly, but I had never asked for stamps before.

I wanted something a little special for a card I was sending to the Iowan.  I had fashioned an envelope from some handmade specialty paper I'd picked up at the art store around the corner.  It had little birds on it...