United States Postal Service
Have you had to mail any packages for the holidays? My family lives all over the country so there is always a lot of package mailing going on at any given time of the year. The frequency increases at the holidays.
Yesterday, I took our stack of Christmas cards to the [tag]USPS[/tag] first thing in the morning to drop them in the drive through mail boxes. All 4 mailboxes were full to overflowing. These are those big blue boxes, you know the ones. So, I decided to swing back around, park and take my stack of cards inside the post office. The boxes inside were almost as full, but at least I didn’t feel that my cards were going to fall out onto the pavement after I left.
I also had 2 packages to mail but it was only 8 a.m. and the P.O. doesn’t open until 8:30. Plus, there was all ready a very long line forming waiting for the doors to open. Now, I have written about the [tag]USPS in Allen, TX[/tag] before and my opinion of them really has not changed, so I took my two packages and drove over to the [tag]UPS Store[/tag].
The UPS Store conveniently opens at 8 a.m., half an hour earlier than the post office, and there were only 2 customers waiting ahead of me. My total wait time was probably about 5 minutes and my packages were on their merry way. One of those packages they even boxed for me as I didn’t have the correct size box at home.
Today I had one more box to mail, this one full of fabric that belonged to my sister who visited me last week. She wanted to lighten her suitcase load, so she left some things for me to mail home to her. I finally got around to that today. She lives in Eastern Kentucky though and for some reason, it is much cheaper to use the postal service to ship to her than to use UPS, so I decided to brave the postal service (or lack of service).
I did need a shipping label and was unable to find one at the post office (not surprising), but after standing in line for about 10 minutes, I spied a label at the counter. I got out of line, snatched a label and took myself and my box over to the self-check out. I had never used this machine before, but I figured it beat standing in line for another 20 or 30 minutes. Thankfully, a postal employee decided to stand behind me and assist. There were quite a few questions on the screen that I had to answer and some were a bit unclear. In the end though, I was able to print the postage, attach it to the package and pay. The man then took my package to be shipped and I was all done. The next time I use the machine it will go faster because I am now experienced. In the end, this is the only way to go, as long as the machine is in operation!
I would like to add that the USPS employee who did assist me was the nicest man I’ve seen in this particular post office. The other employees I’ve dealt with over the past 8 months since moving here leave little to be desired.
