Perks and Canada Post

You know what one of the best perks of being pregnant is? Stork parking. Yep, I know it is lame, but stores provide it so I use it! They don’t call it stork parking up here. It’s “expecting mother” parking or “mother with child” parking. It is especially nice now that the parking lots are covered in ice and melty slush holes.

I went to the so-called post office today to buy stamps for all the Christmas cards. Postage to the States costs 85 cents per letter! That is insane. Plus, it is a really ugly stamp. The “Christmas” stamp to the States has Eskimos on it. An Eskimo man, and an Eskimo woman holding an Eskimo baby. Then they wonder why people in the States think everyone lives in igloos here and there is no electricity. I bought a bunch of Canadian stamps, too. I just figured the guy would give me the holiday stamps, but no. He sold me just the plain flag stamps. So, after I put stamps on all my cards to the US I went back up to the counter to get the cute little snowman stamps.

The same guy who sold them to me picked up the stamps and started whining. “Oh, this is going to be a lot of work to trade these for the other stamps.” Then I said, “For you, not for me. I just have to stand here.” He says, “We didn’t have the other stamps when you bought these.” I say, “Yea, that was 30 seconds ago.” He then threw the stamps down, pouted and turned to the other lady and said, “Well, you can do it if you want but I’m not going to.”

The lady came over and I said, “Gee, this is what I love about Canadian customer service.” It took her about 45 seconds to do the transaction so I don’t know what that other guy’s problem was. He’s always a jerk when I go in there.

Here is something you may not know about Canadian post offices. They aren’t really post offices run by Canada Post. Canada Posts franchises them out so there are “post offices” in all kinds of strange places. Say if Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart wanted to put a post office in there, if he was in Canada he could. Needless to say, this does not promote the most knowledgeable employees working at the “post office” and I’m not sure this is really the image that Canada Post is trying to project – but there you have it: another Canadian oddity.