Greenpoint
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Culture on the Cheap
The Greenpoint Post Office: An Alien Perspective
Filed under: 11222, Fuck This Shit, Greenpoint, Greenpoint Brooklyn, Greenpoint Magic
As some of you know already yours truly had a rather infuriating experience at our local post office recently. For those of you who are not in the know here’s a general outline:
1. December 17th: my inlaws shipped two packages to Chez Shitty.
2. December 22nd: my inlaws inquired as to whether or not we received said packages. We had not.
3. December 27th: yours truly went to our local post office so as to inquire to their whereabouts. I was told that without a receipt they could not find them. I pointed out that I was not left a receipt— but had been told by the shippers of said packages that they should be here. The employee once again stated that without a receipt there was nothing she could do. This exchange repeated itself at least three times before enough complaining by yours truly merited she look anyway: nothing doing.
4. This I related to my mother-in-law (so she could take up the matter on her end).
5. And I opined on Facebook:
If you love someone— or at the very least doe not HATE them— do NOT make them go to the Greenpoint Post Office.
As of the writing of this post this observation has been “liked” by no less than eleven people. A few have even seen fit to share their experiences with me. For example:
…I never received a package, never got a notice, and went on USPS.com last night to track said package. Apparently, it is at the Greenpoint P.O., but I don’t have a notice. Coincidence??
Curiosity piqued, I decided to see what the “bathroom wall of the Internet” (Yelp) had to say about this establishment. Suffice it to say my experience (and frustration) were shared by a number of my fellow citizens. Here are two of my personal favorites:
You know that expression, “to go postal on somebody?” Just try to get anything mail-related accomplished here – you’ll be wishing concealed firearms were legal. I once stood in line for 30+ minutes, only to have the last remaining postal worker close her window in my face 15 minutes before closing. From the slow-as-molasses lines to the always missing supplies to the sour faces of the employees, this nightmare of a place would make even Freddy Krueger scared to come back.
Breathtaking incompetency, nothing is stocked (pens/forms), and the clerks are beyond rude. I literally have never waited less than 35 minutes at this PO. They should fire all of the staff and hire some monkeys. At least then you would understand why s**t was flung in your face every time you went in.
Yup.
To be fair there are a few favorable reviews of this place. There is at least one helpful employee there to my recollection. But the previous are the exceptions to the rule. So I began imagining who would actually like the Greenpoint Post Office. The logical conclusion I drew was a misanthropic, misogynistic extra-terrestrial which savors human misery and is bent on world domination.
I decided to have some fun with this idea (Hey, it’s not like it is going to change anytime soon. If anything after this community is “developed”, it’ll get worse) and authored a “review” on “Zartek’s behalf. Follows is a teaser/snippet:
Salutations Earthlings,
My name is Zartek. I hail from a planet far from your own. I recently had the pleasure of visiting the place you call “earth”. My rationale for this journey is roughly along the lines of what you earthlings call “poverty tourism”. The crucial difference is I am not interested in rest and relaxation inside a fortified paradise protected from grinding human misery. Rather, my ideal vacation is direct contact with human misery.
And after some research via Yelp I deduced the Greenpoint Post Office was just the place for me!
Enjoy!
Photo Credits: The image of the Ark of the Covenant being handled by a “top man” hails from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Comments
3 Comments on The Greenpoint Post Office: An Alien Perspective
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MaineBarnCat on
Wed, 28th Dec 2011 11:53 pm
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cc on
Thu, 29th Dec 2011 11:31 am
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rutila on
Thu, 29th Dec 2011 12:23 pm
Suggest to the in-laws that they follow the crowd, and ship UPS or FedEx. It sounds like the Greenpoint P.O. is leading the charge of the USPS toward irrelevancy and dissolution. Lawrence Sanders predicted this end 36 years ago in his novel The Tomorrow File.
Aw, poor Greenpoint post office. It’s one of the more pleasant Brooklyn post offices I’ve visited. The machine works great, the forms and boxes always seem to be in stock, and the cashiers are polite and understanding. The rudest people I encounter in the post office are the customers who can’t be bothered to wait in line ten minutes, and try and incite other customers to complain (???? lady we’ve been here for 5 minutes cool it!).
I’ve seen customers complain about some legit-sounding issues, but I have a feeling they’d get a lot further if they weren’t so angry and rude to the postal employees.
Anyway, I’ve been to much worse post offices, and I’ve come to like our little outpost.
Thankfully there’s a post office a block from where I work (and since I’m in Hoboken there’s never been more than two people ahead of me). Otherwise, my mother and I would use this one and opt for only two employees since the rest couldn’t be bothered with pleasant customer service. Seriously, we’d let other people go ahead of us on line and wish them luck. I can’t tell you the amount of times we’ve been mistreated because the rules change on a dime in this place regarding who fills out what form (postal worker or customer) and what information is needed (sometimes just a ZIP code, other times the full address).
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