Getting to Know You

I'm friends with the postal service.   They take gifts to friends and family at my request.  They deliver the regular mail.  Good folks, generally.  This time of year it can be a love-want-to-scream relationship, however.

What I love most about the post office is that "automated postal worker" thingy that allows you to mail stuff all by yourself and even buy stamps.  Other folks have caught on, too.  When I was in the other day to drop off a box, the line was 5 people deep.  But then it's the Christmas rush.

Fill them as full as you can.
Heavy and bulging costs no more.

As I get to know the system better, I've learn some helpful tips.  What I wanted to tell all those folks, waiting and anxious because they had a hundred things to do besides wait in line, is that if they used a FLAT RATE PRIORITY BOX they could print their postage at home on their computer, and save all the line stuff.  The cool thing is that weight makes no difference.  It's the perfect way to ship leadened fruit cakes or dumbbells (just joking).   So I used my own smarts and went home to do the same.  Just a minor hitch--after filling in all the required fields for the label and hitting "print label," my computer screen said, "processing. . .processing. . .processing" and then--nothing.  No labels.  So I checked the little box that says, "No, it didn't print.  Don't charge me," and tried the whole thing again.  Of course, the results were the same.

Later my husband suggested that their website was just overwhelmed with other folks doing exactly the same thing and that I should give it another try.  The third time the printer was as still as before, charmed or not.   I had been so pleased with myself for avoiding the lines by using this helpful, on-line option that I was beginning to take it personally.  So I went very late at night (the lobby with the robot postal worker is always open), printed the two labels I needed and went home intensely determined. "Finding the grinch/glitch" marched right up to the front of the waiting line of  Things I get to do today.  On the USPS website there is actually a "live chat" that connects you immediately to a person to help.  The helpful person said this, "Safari's latest update is incompatible with label printing.  Use Chrome or another browser."  Thank you, kind person!  I (and you, my dear reader) needed to know that.

Today I boxed the last of the packages that Santa forgot to pick up in his sleigh last week ('cause I just now finished sewing it) and gave my friends at the postal website another try.  The label printed.  USPS, I'm getting to know you, and it's beginning to look more like Christmas.