Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

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Post Office

348 words

I've been at the post office yesterday, getting the form to make them re-send our mail to the new address once we have moved later this month. They charge €15 for the privilege now. An they have a rather funny form to do so: At the top it says 'Use capital block letters to fill out' while a few lines below they actually pre-printed my name onto it – in the usual mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. Bad.

I also want to take the time and note that the experience of post offices has improved in Germany lately. Not only have they introduced what I like to call the psychologically advantageous 'English queueing' with one long queue for all counters rather than a couple of separate ones, but the offices are brighter with more open space. Even the employees seem friendlier than they used to be. Helpful even. E.g. when requesting that form, they immediately asked whether they should arrange for our phone line to move as well.

Sadly I had fought that battle with Deutsche Telekom themselves just minutes before. (The battle itself wasn't too bad, except from the fact that they charge €30 just to transfer our number from one line to another – which probably means nothing but flipping a few bits in some database. I also learned that wanting to have a so-called 'broad'-band internet connection will not only set us back around €200 in one off set up fees, DSL modem, router &c, it will also cost around €50 a month. So that's 2,5 times the money we pay now for about a twentieth of the download speed. Bad deal.

But back to the post office: I have the feeling that post offices are places of good mood. There are the grandparents sending parcels to their grandchildren, the people from far away, making sure they get the right postage for the letter to their families and so on. Most people are doing something nice when going to the post office.

No fear, I shall be back in grumpy mode again soon.

March 4, 2004, 14:22

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