The Government Works for You

Many tales, even horror stories, have been told about the “red tape” and bureaucracy in dealing with government agencies. But it’s a fact of life in modern society. We pay taxes to fund services. In order to deliver services, government must hire people. The problem, according to popular argument, is that unlike private enterprise, government employees do not have to worry about competition. There are no Mom and Pop DMVs down the street threatening to take their customers. If you want to drive, you have to endure the indignities of long wait times, surly representatives and arcane regulations and fees.

The U.S. Postal Service is an exception. There are competitors…UPS and Fed Ex for example. But that doesn’t stop the post office from behaving as if its customers have no choices. Several times I have waited in a long line at the post office and just when it is my turn, the postal employee checks the clock, puts up the “Next Window” sign and walks away…all while there are a dozen people in line behind me. No privately owned business would ever do that to its customers and hope to stay in business.

A recent run in at the post office illustrates this disconnect perfectly. Here’s the situation: my sister sent me a book by “media mail” which is a slightly less expensive option than First Class. The book traveled from Crocket, California to Chico, which according to Google is 149.5 miles. I’m not sure how many days it took. Doesn’t really matter.

The problem was, my sister addressed the book to my “old” address. I still reside at that address but a few months ago I got a post office box. Because I just don’t get enough of government employees, I wanted to make sure I get to enter a government office six days a week but not on Federal holidays. It is important to note that my “old” address, where I still reside, was serviced by the same Post Office. So basically, my mail goes to the same post office but instead of putting it out on a truck for delivery they stick it in a small box and I come and pick it up.

Back to the book. It cost $2.82 for this book to be transported 149.5 miles by trusty postal workers via media mail. That’s a bargain. But once the book arrived at the post office it encountered a problem: a forwarding order.  Generally speaking, when you change your address, you let the post office know so it can forward your mail to you. All of your mail comes with a yellow sticker with your new address on it. In my case, it takes a few days extra for someone or some machine to slap the sticker on, have the mail re-sorted and put into the little box.

When I got to the post office the other day, I got a notice in my little box that I received a package. The book! When I went to get the book from the postal worker, I learned something new. Did you know that media mail cannot be forwarded? Neither did I. What does this mean and how does this illustrate bureaucracy, you ask?

Well, apparently my book arrived at my post office, addressed to my residence instead of my post office box. So a government employee, slapped a yellow forwarding sticker on my package, stuck it in a cabinet (because it wouldn’t fit in my little box) and slipped a pick up slip in my post office box. Which is exactly what the government employee would have done if it WAS addressed to my post office box. Except the part about the yellow sticker.  

But remember the part about not forwarding media mail? Instead of cheerfully handing over my book, the government employee charged me $2.82 before they would hand it over. That number should look familiar. Because it is the exact amount my sister paid in postage for the book to travel 149.5 miles. And instead of being grateful to me for eliminating home delivery of my mail and paying them to rent the box, they charge me to slap a yellow sticker on my book. Because they don’t “forward” media mail.

Foreshadow This

Every once in awhile a favorite author will let me down. I don’t know about you, but once I find an author I like, I read everything I can find by him or her. This is usually a good strategy and leads me to many other good books.

But over the last several years I have noticed a trend among authors, and many of them favorites of mine, that I find disappointing and disturbing. Worse, I have been unable to finish books I started. The culprit? Foreshadowing. I hate foreshadowing.

I read for entertainment and escape. I love chick lit or beach reads. Light, easy, fast and often forgettable. Sometimes I can’t even remember that I’ve read them. I’m only a little embarrassed by that. I have my degree in English. I’ve read my share of literary giants. I still read them on occasion. But when an author, especially a tried and true author who I have counted on to transport me to other worlds for a few hours, turns to foreshadowing, there is only so much I can take.

Generally foreshadowing is used to set up some tragic event. I’m not so shallow that I refuse to read a book that has tragedy. But when a book tells you over and over that something bad is going to happen…and keeps stringing you along while you wait for that bad thing to jump out at you, my nerves can only handle so much.

It’s like watching a horror movie. The heroine hears a bump in the basement and goes down the steps with the lights off. You and everyone watching knows something terrible is going to happen, but you and everyone watching can’t stop her. It’s agonizing and terrifying at the same time. Personally, I don’t like agony or terror. I avoid horror movies. If it happens quickly, like ripping off a band-aid, I can deal with it. But when that trip down the stairs lasts too long and there are too many false alarms, my nerves can’t handle it. It’s not entertainment.

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors. The first book I read of hers was The Bean Trees. I loved the story as much as I loved where I read the book…on various trains riding through Germany, Austria and Switzerland on my first trip to Europe. As I read other stories of hers, Animal Dreams, Pigs In Heaven, I found myself identifying with her protagonists: quirky, flawed women.

Then came The Poisonwood Bible. It is a story about a missionary and his family of four daughters who live in Africa. I found a lot to like in the beginning of the book: her descriptions, characters, the exotic yet dangerous locale. But she kept hinting that something bad was going to happen to one of the daughters. At the end of every chapter, I would be on the edge of my seat expecting that the worst had happened. Who was it? Who had we lost?

But the next chapter would start and they were all fine. After several chapters of this, I gave up. I had had enough. Kill the damn girl, whichever one it is, let us mourn and move on. Please. I have never finished that book even though I have read subsequent books written by her.

Diana Gabaldon is another author who almost lost me with her incessant foreshadowing. I love her Outlander series. It is a little embarrassing that I found the first book in the Romance section of the bookstore. But it’s a series my sister loves so I gave it a try. Actually, it was a selection for a book club I was involved in years ago. So it had to have literary value, right?

I loved the first few books in the series. It was part historical fiction, part romance, some mind-bending time travel with kilts mixed in. Good stuff. Then came The Fiery Cross and the foreshadowing began in earnest. There was going to be a fire. A newspaper clipping from the future confirmed that the whole family was going to be lost in this fire.

Now, with time travel, you’ve got an opportunity to change the course of events. Or do you? Maybe. But the incessant references to this fire, the date of the fire and the turbulent times had me abandoning the book for several years. Only after the next book in the series was published and my sister told me about the stupid fire was I able to finish the book so I could read the next one.

I’m not sure why foreshadowing bothers me so much. Perhaps it is that real life doesn’t foreshadow for us. Generally we have no idea when disaster is going to hit. And I think that is something to be grateful for. I’ve had some pretty bad things happen in the last year. I think if I had known ahead of time that bad things were on the horizon, the angst before the bad events would have been increased but that would have had no effect on what it took to actually deal with the events.

Foreshadowing in real life would have just increased my suffering. Just like foreshadowing in books causes me suffering. And since I’ve got enough suffering in my real life, I refuse to let this cheap literary trick keep me on the hook. It’s lazy and unrealistic. And there are plenty of books out there that can entertain me without it.