Short and Barefoot

I am short. Not too short. Not midget-sized short or anything like that. Just 5'2", which is not short enough to justify the behavior of the postmaster of my local post office. There are actually no characteristics that justify his behavior, but it is possible that he disagrees. This is how it went:

I was walking home at around 4:30 and thought I would drop by the post office because it closes at 5:00. The weather was lovely, thanks to the early spring that climate change decided to give us in order to placate us, so I wasn't wearing shoes. It's possible that shoes might have given me the half-inch necessary to earn some respect from the postmaster, but probably not. So I went in ... and I had a package! I love packages. And this package was special. It was ceramic teabowls shipped from Japan. Some were antiques! And despite the fact that the box quite clearly had "FRAGILE" written all over it, the postmaster was handling it in the rough sort of way that would get you arrested, but only if the package were actually a baby. I decided not to confront him about it, but only because it wasn't a baby. I'm also sure that the half-squished state of the box happened somewhere between here and Japan, so I didn't push that either. What did bother me was that the package had been shipped to a destination approximately four hundred miles away from where it was supposed to go. Alas, they were my dad's teabowls. Not sure how they got to my post office.

So I told the postmaster in my most assertive (not at all assertive) voice, "Um, this package was shipped to the wrong address. Is there any way to forward it or something?"

He looked at me in a way that suggested that he was either high or sleepwalking. "Um ... "

"You know, because it's not supposed to be here."

"You'll have to take it with you," he told me, blinking slowly. "Write a new address."

"Can't I do that here?" I asked.

"Sign here," he said, giving me a pen. Before I could argue he called, "Next!" and started speaking to the woman behind me over my head, because I'm apparently that short.

Don't let this happen to you, folks. Wear shoes in your post office.

(Not wearing shoes is also not an excuse for rude behavior. Remember kids, don't discriminate against short or barefoot people. They're human too.)

Update: always wear shoes in restaurants, though. I'm pretty sure that's a law.