What?

It’s about the durges at the Post Office. My mailing address is a Post Office Box so by choice, I am obliged to show up at my local Post Office, multiple days of the week to collect my mail. Throughout the year it is a small, sane place. But come the Monday after Thanksgiving and it turns into a disaster scene for the weeks until Christmas Day when it closes. Hordes of people are formed in scraggly lines, sometimes snaking out the two sets of parallel doors and into the street.  They are jostling, pushing with their feet, holding in their arms packages of various sizes. Within this hapless gathering of folks sparks the occasional temper. At this, my thought is, what did you expect? Is it not possible to think and plan ahead? It’s not like you didn’t know the Holidays were coming; they’ve been a repeat event for as long as you’ve been around. Did you purchase a gift newly minted this week? Did you think if you sent it early, it would be misplaced at the other end? And the beleaguered postal employees: they should work faster? put in longer hours? not take lunch? stay late? Where were you in October? And come the Monday after Christmas, the sanity returns.  The entire exercise and this facet of human nature, I fail to grasp.