MatthewMeyer.net Blog

Not only are the roads more crowded than a Chinese sweatshop, but everyone on the road is either really really young and stupid, or really really old and stupid. There seems to be an average IQ equal to the speed limit, so on open highways you have to deal with drooling morons, but on city streets and in parking lots you've got to deal with people who fight with their dogs over who gets to lick their own shit off of the lawn.

Not only are the people operating on the same brain wavelegth as bread, but whoever designed the city did so as a cruel joke. He must have moved on to invent great mazes for lab rats. Sarasota as 3-way, 5-way, and even 6-way intersections, but only a handful of 4-way (i.e. logical) intersections. Street names change at random, and then show up again somewhere else. One-way streets rule the road. There are traffic lights on every corner except the ones where you desperately need them, and their sole purpose is to annoy people, because they frequently break, holding on red for 15 minutes while the other street goes from green to yellow, and back to green. The ones that actually do work create such awful traffic problems that you can end up sitting through multiple green lights in a row, just because the intersections get so jammed. What's worse is that there's no police anywhere except on the highways, so many people in the city will drive over medians, run red lights, and even drive on the wrong side of the road with impunity. Combine all of this with the normal Florida road rules which allow U-Turns anytime, anywhere and specifically state that to drive in Florida you must be the product of a brother-sister coupling and you will easily see how much of a pain in the ass I am talking about here.

So the other day I get to the PO, five miles from my house, after a gruelling one-hour drive through twisting, stinking, hot, confusing streets and face all of the aforementioned problems and more. When I finally do arrive, the line for the mail is out the door. There are always this many people at any Post Office, except that Sarasota's PO is about 100 feet long. They should have hired 2 extra workers instead of funding a longer building to hold the longer lines. Incidentally, there are 6 or 7 teller windows, but never more than 3 workers (sometimes only two). There is no express line either, nor is there an "IQ-higher-than-your-age" line. So I had to get into the back of this sickeningly long queue.

Half an hour later and halfway through the line, I notice the man in the separate teller area reserved specifically for selling stamps is doing postage as well. There is a very stupid lump of silk and perfume (also known as a female Florida citizen) mailing a bunch of packages and being slow about it. I think and I ponder, "Should I get into that line and sacrifice my spot in this line?" It was much shorter and I'd have been done much faster, however with my luck the guy there would turn me back for some dumb reason. After seeing a number of other people carrying single packages, like I was, move up the the line and have their items mailed. So I quickly transfered myself to that line. The previoulsly mentioned fat lady was there, right in front of me, making me nauseous from her smell. I could literally see distortion of light waves in about a 3-inch radius from her body. She kept all of her money in a plastic ziploc bag. She dropped some, so I figured I'd be a gentleman and help her pick it up. In the meantime, 2 people butt in front of me. So finally, I get to the teller. He looks at me, lo and behold, and sends me back to the other line because I'm only mailing the same exact thing as EVERYONE ELSE IN THIS LINE!

So I go back to the original queue, wait for another hour to get to the front of the line. There are only 2 tellers now, and I am counting the seconds, making bets with myself and figuring out the mathematical probability of getting either teller. At the first teller is a blind woman who needed special service, so I figured I'd probably end up going to the other teller -- a man who as far as I knew had both eyes (a major asset down here in Heaven's Waiting Room). However, the man proceeds to pull out an enormous box full of envelopes and asks for separate receipts for each and every one. So the teller is going through at least fifty envelopes, ripping off tags and stamping each one. My head is now spinning.

Just then, the man from the stamp line comes over to tell me that he can take me now. I could tell by the way that he stumbled halfway through his sentence that he did recognize me from over an hour ago. So I went back to that line, got my $2.33 postage on my single package, and left, only to drive through Sarasota once again, this time at Rush Hour.

I really, really, REALLY hate the Post Office.