I had to visit a US Post Office recently. After spending the year learning about operations management, process improvement, and organizational behavior, I must admit that the visit irked me on so many levels I could feel myself clamming up and needing to get out as fast as possible.
The thing is, I needed to mail my rent to Boston (from New York). This is probably the only part of my life that has not evolved into even the 20th century yet. I still pay rent by check and I still send it via the mail. In order to do this I needed two things: an envelope and a stamp.
Unable to find these things in single serving size at a deli (because why would I?), I set off to the Post Office. (Which, by the way is not conveniently located and keeps inconvenient hours). Imagine my surprise when I got there to discover A) no envelopes for sale (isn’t that kind of a natural COMPLEMENT (thanks Prof Collis) to selling postal services) and B) no easy way to get stamps. The line was 15 people deep, and I went to a machine where my only option was to buy 40 stamps. (Credit to the USPS 1 point for the “forever” stamp.)
Then off to Duane Reade to buy 80 (79 of which I don’t need) envelopes.
And then back in search of a blue mailbox.
Short point: postal mail sucks. The government should dissolve it, force everyone to go paperless, offer it as an uber premium service (or make FedEx pickup and manage the business), and be done with it as it is now.
So, I’m done moving to Cambridge. Everything went smoothly (although I do believe I have more stuff than I should… definitely still a packrat, despite having thrown away about 12 bags of stuff). The Penske truck was completely pain-free and actually had a iPod jack… who knew?
I got all my stuff into the house up there, unpacked a few essentials and booked it back to nyc yesterday for one last night in the Big Apple. Now I’m sitting at LaGuardia waiting to fly to Chicago for a few weeks. (And hopefully acquiring an iPhone later today).
Two lessons I learned while moving:
1. Girls have lots of stuff too. But their boxes are labeled with things like “Shoes 1″ and “Shoes 2″ and “Shoes 3″ and “Purses.” Weird.
2. Mt Kisco, New York is not a good place to stop for food while driving between New York and Boston. While attempting to make a rare appearance at Burger King (because who eats Burger King in nyc? do they even have Burger King’s in nyc?), we followed a road sign that said there was a Burger King at the Mt Kisco exit. Well…. literally 3 country roads, 18 minutes, several miles, and a pass thru DOWNTOWN MT KISCO (which is, in fact, nowhere near the interstate), we found the Burger King. It was so far away from the highway that we took a different route back to the highway than we took getting off the highway.
Anyway. Lessons learned.
Looking forward to spending the next few weeks at home. Looking less forward to finishing the Finance and Quantitative Analysis modules for HBS in the next few days, but that’s not so negotiable.
It will go without fail, that as long as you desire to be on time or early, new york city transit will collapse and deliver you late. Similarly, if you desire to be someplace on time or fashionably late, new york city transit will inevitably have a train waiting and deliver you with more than enough time to kill – causing you to appear over-eager… middle-aged even.