Groucho Megs
Recently the schedule changed at work and now instead of having to go into the office on Mondays and Thursdays, I only have to go in on Wednesdays. I will go another day of the week if there is something that I really need to be at the office to accomplish, but happily most of the time I am at home four days a week.
I love working from home. I do not miss the rush to get ready in time to avoid the morning traffic in town. I do not miss putting almost a hundred miles on my car every day. Being at home means most of the time I’m not wearing real pants, I basically never have to wear shoes, and usually the cat is either curled up next to me or in the next room when I can go whenever I need to huff some of his fur for a dopamine hit. Working from home gives me back two hours of my day that would normally be lost to commuting, and that extra time is invaluable.
On days when I have no Zoom meetings it is very quiet. I will put on a podcast or music and talk to the cat and that usually fills the void, but every now and then I feel the need to talk to a person or at least see another human person in real life. This is usually when I leave the apartment to run an errand or go for a walk. By the time I’m done with my errand or walk I am also usually done with humanity.
For example, the other day I walked to the post office. Anyone who is related to me, friends with me, or in general expects a birthday card from me knows how terrible I am at getting to the post office. (Apologies for all of the missed or extremely late birthday cards. I’m just the worst at mailing things.) The post office is only about four blocks away and yet there is something that keeps me from getting over there when I need to. It probably has to do with how annoying it is once you’re in there.
I had to go the other day because I got a missed delivery notice stuck to my mailbox. Someone was trying to send me a certified letter and a signature was required. I wasn’t home when they tried to deliver, and even if I was the way my current building is set up it takes too long to get to the front door to sign for anything. I have to first put on shoes, go out the back door, around the building, through the alley, and then appear beside the mailbox, usually scaring the bejeezus out of whoever is trying to deliver something. It will be nice when I move and I actually have a front door that I can use.
Anyway, Friday was a nice day so I took the delivery slip and walked over to the post office. Miraculously I was the first in line when I walked in. There was one person working at the counter and he was dealing with a couple who were shipping multiple large packages. He was taking his time, as was the couple. They were clearly in no rush. Neither was I, to be honest, but I also wasn’t trying to spend twenty minutes at the post office when all I had to do was pick up a letter.
I had gotten there at exactly the right moment because soon there was a line of five or six people behind me and I was grateful to be next in line. Shortly after having that thought, a woman walked over from one of the countertops where you can fill out the various post office-y forms and stepped in front of me.
“I’m actually in front of you,” she said. “I was here before but then I just had to fill these out.” She held up two money orders to show me.
I paused, processing this action. Being non-confrontational I said, “Okay…” but it didn’t sound like “okay”, it sounded more like, “WTF, lady?”
I would never have said anything to her, but I’m pretty sure by any post office etiquette rules, she was wrong. If you go up to the counter and they hand you something to fill out that means you have to leave the counter and go do paperwork, you go to the back of the line. You may have already been on line, but clearly you weren’t ready to conduct your business, so you go to the back of the line. Why should the rest of the people who are ready to conduct their business have to let you cut back in line? Not cool at all and definitely not how it works.
So between the lady cutting in front of me and the people taking forever to mail two packages, I was annoyed. But then another postal worker walked by behind the counter and, bless her, she noticed that I was holding a delivery slip. She beckoned me over and asked for my ID, at the same time telling the woman in front of me that she had to wait for her coworker because there wasn’t another open till to cash the money orders. Thrilled to be moving the process along, I handed her my ID and delivery slip and leaned against the counter to wait.
From my new vantage point I watched the theater of the package sending which was still going on. They were at the point of trying to pay for the packages, but the system wasn’t cooperating. They tried inserting the credit card, but it wouldn’t read it. They tried tapping the card, but that didn’t work either. Finally, the postal worker took the card and started typing it in manually, slow as molasses. I was so grateful to not have to wait for that production to be over.
But I was still waiting and for longer than I expected. The woman helping me was gone long enough that the irrational side of my brain was like, “Who cares? Let’s just leave, it probably doesn’t matter.” I entertained this thought until I remembered that she had my driver’s license. Plus I didn’t know what the letter was about and since it was certified I figured it was probably important. Also it would have been extremely rude to just walk away when someone was helping me.
A few minutes later she reappeared with letter in hand and apologized because she couldn’t find it at first, the address was different on the letter than it was on my ID. I took my items and thanked her, walking away from the counter where the couple was still trying to send their packages.
As I headed out the door I looked at the letter and realized what the problem had been. Instead of addressing the letter to my apartment, they addressed it to the property which has a different number. I’m not going to disclose my address here to illustrate what I mean, but just let me say that no person in their right mind would write an address the way this one was written. It made no sense. No wonder the woman helping me couldn’t find it.
Another thing that immediately pissed me off was that my name was spelled wrong. THERE IS NO H IN MEGAN. Get out of here with your extra consonants.
Between the misspelling and the incorrect address I was able to figure out what the letter was before I ever opened it. Turns out it was the hard copy of a letter I had already received from my landlord via email informing me that I have to move by December 31st. I’m sure it is the law that tenants be notified in multiple ways and by certified letter, but that really hacked me off. By that point I had spoken on the phone to my landlord’s real estate people multiple times, had already found a new apartment, and was well into plans for moving. I fucking KNOW I have to move! Thanks for making me waste precious time going to the post office to tell me what I already knew. Really appreciate it.
So you see that one simple errand to the post office really fulfilled my need for human interaction for at least a week.
Although I’m medicated and knew that this move was coming, I’m still teetering on the edge of content and grouchy these days. Yesterday I spent a perfectly pleasant morning drinking coffee, reading, working on Christmas presents and was quite serene. Then I went for a walk/jog and got stuck behind one too many people pushing strollers and was immediately enraged by how slow they were walking, how it forced me to walk by them in the street which has no real shoulder, how their choice to have children was really getting in my way. I turned into an instant grouch and I’m sure my facial expression told them all about it, which is probably why they were looking at me weird.
There is a lot going on these days. Between moving and work and trying to earn my Google certificate in project management, my brain is full of work to be done. But on top of that I have the additional tasks I’ve set myself like making a bunch of presents for Christmas, hitting my goal of reading 42 books this year, and making sure I exercise three to four days a week as advised by my doctor. I’m also in charge of the games for our office Christmas party and writing Holiday Jeopardy questions is a task I take very seriously and requires a lot of time.
Oh and also the world is burning down, the country has lost it’s collective mind, people are legitimately scared, and I feel like I should be stockpiling birth control.
To sum up, I am currently a bit of a grouch. The extra time in my days because I work from home is nice, but I suspect it’s not going to be enough. I am thinking that I will need to make some hard decisions and cut out some things that I won’t like. Probably I won’t make as many Christmas presents as I want to. Maybe I need to switch exclusively to audiobooks for the rest of the year so that reading time can also be productive time. Perhaps I need to go easier on myself and take a little longer to finish my Google certificate.
It’s not what I want to do, but it might be what I need so that on the one day a week that I am around people, I can enjoy their company instead of wanting to hide in my office away from the madding crowd. Groucho Megs would be a cool nickname, but it’s not how I want to be known all the time.
But I’m just saying that lady at the post office was totally wrong and she should have gone to the back of the line.