Scarlett O'Hara On Prozac

Well, We Got Trouble My Friends

When I was growing up, one of my favorite musicals was "The Music Man", in which a fast-talking swindler is warned not to try working his scam in Iowa, because the people there will not fall for his tricks. Intrigued, the con man decides to exit the train at the first stop in Iowa and see if this is true. He polishes up his charm, puts on his best smile, and waltzes in to town ready to conquer.

Unfortunately, Professor Harold Hill is met with a chilly reception. Not only will they not listen to his sales pitch, they won't even say hello. Every time her greets someone, he gets a smart-ass answer or the equivalent of an early twentieth century, "Buzz off, son, I'm busy."

The movie is riddled with references to the famed 'Iowa stubborness' and how nobody there listens to a word anyone else has to say about much of anything. I always thought this was a very funny movie. Complete fiction, of course. Nobody was really that rude or that inhospitable, or that closed-minded (except for perhaps New Yorkers. Oh, and Florida, but that's another post.)

Now that I'm living and working about 50+miles from the Iowa state line, I'm beginning to see that the advice given in that movie was far from fictional. These people really are stubborn, rude, closed-minded, nosy, and cheap. They don't want to pay thirty-seven cents for a postage stamp. Small wonder Professor Hill had his work cut out for him trying to sell them a boys' band.

Every day I have the privilege of running what might be the world's smallest post office in a very small community just west of Rockford. And every day, I encounter somebody who would fit right in with the citizens of River City. My first week there, I had one old gentleman tell me I was not allowed to park where I was parking because there was not enough room in the parking lot for everyone to park if the post office got busy. I thanked him and continued to park there anyway because lets face it...if everyone in the entire town came to the post office at one time they would hardly fill the lobby. More about this gentleman in a moment.

My first few weeks were filled with puzzled frustration. One guy chewed me out because I accidently put someone else's mail in his box. He called our main offices to complain about this. Said if he was getting someone else's mail, then someone else must be getting his mail. I tried to explain I was new and still learning where everything was and whose box was whose. He said that there weren't enough boxes at this office to get confusing and that I shouldn't make mistakes. By this point I wanted to tell him to stick his mail up his Yankee ass and deliver it to someone who cared but my boss said I had to apologize and assure him we would do all within our power to make sure it didn't happen again.

A few weeks later, another man came in and cussed me up one side and down the other because I removed his mail from his box when it became too full and he had to make a special trip to the post office to get his mail. He said if I did it again he would get everyone in the neighborhood to petition to have the post office closed. I told him if he wanted his mail to remain in his box he had to come pick it up more than once a week, otherwise policy demanded I remove it when it became too full for delivery. I wanted to ask him if he ate and extra bowl of bitch flakes that morning, but instead I turned on the Southern charm and asked him to work with me to find a solution. (He's now one of my nicest customers, strangely enough.)

I kept having run ins with the aforementioned old geezer. He got mad at Christmas because I told him his cards weighed an extra ounce and needed the requisite 23 cent surcharge. He told me he was going to "drop them in a box at another post office and they would go off without his having to pay the postage." I was so mad. It was all I could do to keep from yelling, 'Yeah, and the people who get them will have to pay to get their own Christmas card because you're a cheap-ass bastard who only cares about himself!" This is the same gentleman, by the way, who tried to cut stamps off an envelope and re-use them and did not understand why his mail was returned to him.

Every day, I encounter examples of plain pig-headedness. For example, there's the guy who told me he never puts zip codes on his outgoing mail because "it will get there anyway." This is after he complained that it took seven days for a first class letter to travel from here to Arizona. When I informed him that if he didn't use the proper zip code his mail can not be automated and must be hand processed which can take quite a bit longer, depending on how many other pieces of mail are ahead if of it, and he has no one to blame but himself if his mail doesn't arrive at his destination, he got pissy with me. As if I just made this rule up to inconvenience him or he's right for doing it his way and its still the fault of the US Postal service if his mail gets lost.

Another customer refuses to put his return address on his mail. His reasoning is that if we do our job, his mail won't need to be returned to him, so why does he need a return address? How do you argue with people like this? I tried to explain that sometimes, a delivery address might have changed, or might be wrong, and if there's no return address it goes to the dead letter office, never to be seen again. But no, he would rather insist on doing it his way and then blaming the post office if his mail never arrives.

The more I'm out and about in this area, the more I encounter people who insist on getting in your business and telling you all you do wrong. They, of course, never do anything wrong. And if you respond with anything but words of gratitude for having your faults pointed out to you, they act as if you are the rude and inconsiderate one. Its enough to make one want to break plates.

Now that I think about it, its small wonder that Marion the Librarian (the only intelligent, free-thinking person in River City) fell for Harold Hill. She probably couldn't wait to shake the dust of River City off her feet and tell the whole anti-pool shooting crowd where they could stick their moral superiority.

Oh, no, wait a minute. That's me!

posted by Zoe Richardson @ 7:47 PM