THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE TACKY BUTTON

Last month, I mailed a greeting card with a gift card inside home to my dad. As I stepped up to the counter at the post office/bank/dry cleaner (all in one location...don't ask), I inquired about the helpful clerk's button she was wearing on her shirt. She giggled in excitement that I noticed and told me the meaning of it. Great. Then she gladly set my envelope aside to hand stamp it and charged me $0.42 for the stamp along with the price of some post card stamps I also needed to purchase.

Today, after having a great morning of finding a gem of a book at the local used book store (it's called The Dot and the Line: a Romance in Lower Mathematics by Norton Juster) for only 25 cents, eating a salad with some super yummy poppy seed dressing, and being oh-so-happy about the lack of wind this afternoon, I started to get annoyed by the construction traffic and horrible drivers in Tulsa. My bad. But the last stop on my errand list was the post office and then I was off the road.



Keep in mind, I was at the same post office, mailing the same contents (happy birthday Brother Darren this time), and in line with the same clerk at the counter. The only difference was I didn't ask about her just as equally tacky button on her shirt today and questioned her when she wanted to charge me $0.62 for a normal sized, first-class weight envelope because she couldn't run it through her machine...which meant she would hand stamp it (which wasn't a problem last time). What the heck?! Just goes to show both your attitude and the clerks at the counter can effect the whole transaction. Beast.