Away they go...

Well, the invitations have left my hands and entered the mail system. It was odd how reluctant I was to let them go, having spent the last few weeks poring over the guest list, handwriting each guest's name and address, checking and double checking to make sure everything was just. right. They were my babies, a pretty, neat, pristine stack of invitations tucked into their curlicued address-bearing envelopes.

And now, they've gone byebye, and I'm back from the local post office, where I hand-canceled each of the stamps, a process that went a lot more quickly than I'd anticipated. And here comes the obligatory post office vs wedding rant. (Obligatory, because I've read a lot of forum posts about how uncooperative post offices can be about getting wedding invitations hand-canceled.)

For the past several years, I've been thoroughly pleased with my local post office. After living in NYC, where every post office I ever visited was packed with surly customers and even surlier employees, the post office up the street from me here in Gaithersburg was refreshingly pleasant and efficient.

I enjoyed an easy rapport with the folks behind the counter - the nice ladies with whom I'd chat in Korean; the sweet African-American lady who'd interact with the customers in a brisk, no-nonsense, yet kind and well-meaning way; the older gentleman with a fierce pride in the armed forces whom we'd see regularly 'round the neighborhood taking his daily constitutional during breaks - rain or shine, below-freezing winter or sweltering summer.

I heard and read many of the complaints, rants, and dissatisfied comments about post offices and the USPS and rude postal clerks... And I scoffed. I fiercely defended the USPS and local post offices. Because I loved my local post office and the folks who kept it running so smoothly.

And then today happened. Today was supposed to be kind of exciting for me, the day I finally declared my invitations ready to go out into the world, ready to continue on their way to their intended recipients - the day the whole wedding thing became just a touch more real - because even with only two months left to go, it all still seems a bit surreal sometimes.

Leading up to today, preparing for today, I had inquired no fewer than three separate times - asking different postal employees each time - about the process of coming in to hand-cancel the invitations - because, in my usual control-freak fashion, I wanted to make sure that this part of the process would go smoothly, and because, in my usual hate-to-inconvenience-anyone fashion, I wanted to be sure I wouldn't be in anyone's way.

Each time, I was assured by a smiling post office person that it would be no trouble at all, that I could just come in with my invitations on any day, at any time, that I could walk right up to the counter, bypassing any lines, to request a hand-stamp so I could go off and cancel the invitations myself. Every. single. time. Including just yesterday.

So, that's what I did. I walked in, saw the line, debated waiting in the line, and opted to wait to speak to the pick-up window lady so I could ask her to confirm once again that I could, indeed, ask someone behind the main counter to borrow a hand-stamp, without standing in the main, waiting-to-send line. Which she did. So I waited off to the side until the closest postal clerk - that same gentleman I'd spoken with so many times before - finished helping a customer, only to be ordered curtly, rudely, and unnecessarily loudly to get in line. Shocked by his sheer rudeness, I tried to explain that his colleague had given me permission to talk directly to him or one of his fellow main counter clerks, only to be interrupted and rebuffed, even more curtly, rudely, and insultingly than before.

Now, I don't like to be a part of any scenes, so I stepped back into the line as graciously as I could under the circumstances, feeling a little shell-shocked. To make matters worse, the woman who ended up "helping" me was considerably more polite - though it wouldn't have taken much to be less rude than that man - but still so curt as to be on the cusp of outright rudeness. She begrudgingly picked up a hand-stamp, begrudgingly set the date, and begrudgingly tested the imprint (which was sucky, btw) before begrudgingly handing it to me, grumbling all the while.

I don't know if it had been an especially bad day or just a long one. I don't know if they'd had an influx of super-rude, super-entitled customers - which would piss me off too, but at least I'd attempt to stay professional and throw in a tight little smile. I don't know what was going on at that particular moment that more than one of the usually pleasant, smiling post office people were grumpy and surly - more so even than the many brusque NYC post office people I'd encountered years ago.

Perhaps I should have picked a different time to go - admittedly, 4pm isn't the best time to stop by a post office, assurances to the contrary aside, and well, that part's my fault. (I was just waiting to receive the test invite I'd sent to my own address.) Perhaps I shouldn't have taken at their word those three different employees who had previously assured me I could walk in whenever I wanted to take care of my invitations. Perhaps I should have disregarded the assurances of the four different post office folks that I needn't wait in line to hand-cancel my own invitations, and waited anyway. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

But seriously - what was going on today that the same group of people who had been so nice and pleasant and professional for the past seven years turned into a gang of rude doppelgangers overnight?

To top it all off, the hand-canceled stamp image itself doesn't look all that great as it is; the hand-stamp I was given to use was on the faulty end of the working-properly scale. So those invitations might end up going through a bunch of stamp-canceling and envelope-sorting machines anyway, which the hand-canceling process was supposed to eliminate. Which means they could potentially end up looking crappy (or rather, crappier than they do now, with the blurry, double-image, indistinct cancellation stamp across the upper right-hand corner of each envelope). I guess we'll see.

For the first time in about seven years, I'm highly disappointed in the USPS in general, and my local post office in particular. I was pissed off about it earlier, but now I'm just a little sad and a lot disappointed. And that's all I'll say about that; rant over.

Instead, let's switch focus and ponder the positive - our invitations are done! (Now to encourage my parents to send their set of invites...)