An Incompetence Carol
by Lordleiter
Chapter 3 – The United States Postal Service
Granted, this bit alone would have been totally tolerable. But it landed on top of the other two incidents and just compounded my frustration.
After I had received the new, second ATM card for my wife, Miranda Kopfschmertzen, and after I’d placed a bitter call to my bank, I continued to sort through the rest of the mail.
And there it was, the magic shell on my bowl of incompetence.
Last Christmas, that is Christmas of 2004, I got my wife a subscription to Vogue magazine as a gift. (I got her lots of other awesome stuff too.) But for whatever reason, the subscription post card did not make it to Vogue headquarters. And so I diligently went to the market every month for twelve months to complete the year long subscription.
So this January, we got a letter from Vogue asking for my wife to “start” a subscription for a low price. It was far cheaper than going to the market every month. So I filled out the card, like a dutiful husband and put it in the mail. Vogue was even thoughtful enough to pay the postage.
So what was in the mail that confounded me, you ask? I am sure you already know. It was the subscription card to Vogue I’d mailed off only days before. The postage was properly cancelled by the USPS. But for reasons I can barely explain, it was returned to my house even though it was clearly addressed to Vogue as Vogue has addressed it themselves.
What’s worse, postage had gone up only the day before. So to send the card again in an envelope would require me to go down to the post office and acquire a 2