Have you ever had an experience that should have been infuriating but because it was so ridiculous it just makes you laugh?

I had one of these experiences recently with one of our fine, taxpayer funded, United States Postal workers.

As most people know the post office typically closes at 5PM on most weekdays. Which by the way, is completely absurd since the majority of its customers work until at least 5PM and cannot make it to the post office before 5PM or 6PM. Some post office buildings stay open later but my little post office in my small suburban town chooses to close at a time when the only people who can do business there are stay at home moms and the retired.

Since the post office closes at 5PM I was very happy when made it at 4:50PM the other day. Now unfortunately for me the postal employee who was working behind the counter did not feel the same bit of relief I did when I walked through the door 10 minutes before she was suppose to close the door. In fact, she started off the conversation by saying,

“If you are going to mail those packages you are going to have to hurry. We close in 10 minutes.”

Since I had two fairly complicated packages to mail I needed the assistance of the “mailing expert,” our find postal employee. Let me ask you an obvious question. Do you think this postal employee, who gets paid through my tax dollars, was happy that I needed her assistance with my packages ten minutes before she was suppose to close? Well if you guessed that she was not happy you would be right.

As I began to ask her questions and ask for forms that I needed to fill out her answers became much shorter and irritated. As every minutes and second ebbed away on the government issued clock behind her she became more and more hot headed by the second.

As I fumbled with my box and customs forms she finally belted across the counter,

“Look you are going to have to leave and go to the other post office down the road because they are open to 7PM.”

My response was, “Why would I leave I am nearly done.”

“Well, we close at 5PM, and it is 4:55PM.”

Needless to stay I stayed and finished the paperwork and address labels without any of her help. By the way, I finished at 5:00Pm on the dot!

Let me ask you another question. If you owned a small business and a CUSTOMER walked in 10 minutes before you closed, no matter how unprepared they were, don’t you think you would try to help them with their need even if you were suppose to close only minutes before they walked in? Aren’t your customers the way you put food on your table? Aren’t they everything to your business? If you treat them the way I was treated by this postal worker how long do you think you would be in business?

What kind of customer service or customer appreciation does the USPS show by treating its customers with such utter disrespect and distain?

What happened to the CUSTOMER is always right mentality? Do they not teach that in the training program for new USPS employees? The mailing process can be quite confusing if you are not use to mailing large packages, especially international ones. Shouldn’t the resident expert want to help the CUSTOMER with their shipping needs? You would assume all of these questions would be easy answers but as my “Newman-like” employee displayed it obviously isn’t as easy of a questions as I thought.

No matter what job you are working at, weather it is for the government or private industry, let me encourage you to rise above the disgruntled, burned out, retirement waiting bureaucrats.

Be remarkable in your customer service efforts.

Be helpful and respectful of your customers.

Your performance is directly tied to the attitude you have toward your customers.

I will close with this: As Newman said on Seinfeld, “When you control the mail, you control INFORMATION!”