Trapped in a waiting room from hell

[Geezer]

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/d ... 5520691.jp

Published Date: 04 August 2009
SOME mornings you just know within the first hour it's going to be a bad day.

There are endless possible indicators.

For me they tend to be incidents such as banging my head on the fridge door, discovering cat wee anywhere other than the litter tray or bashing my head as I clamber into the car.

Recent examples include getting in the car after a stormy night to find a puddle of water in the footwell, splattering fishy cat food juice on my arm 30 seconds before I should have left the house for work, and opening the skylight and knocking a pile of dust into my eye.

But all those irritants pale into insignificance when compared to waiting 20 minutes for a package at a Royal Mail depot at 7.20am.

It should be really exciting getting home to find one of those little red and white cards Royal Mail cards on your floor.

It generally means someone's sent you something exciting – or at least something too big to fit through your letterbox.

But I'm sure I'm not the only one that gets a sinking feeling when I see that little "sorry, you were out" message.

That's because instead of wondering what fab prezzie I've been sent and who might have sent it, I'm inwardly groaning at the thought of having to get up half an hour earlier to pick the flippin' thing up before work.

Also, in this instance, I knew it wasn't anything I would readily surrender half an hour's sleep for – like a lifetime's supply of Hotel Chocolat goodies or a year's worth of Bliss beauty products.

It was just my contact lenses – which EVERY other postman, every month for the past 16 months, has managed to successfully push through the letterbox or leave outside the door.

So, being a procrastinator and knowing I had to pick them up between 6.30am to 11.30am, I simply left the little card under a pile of books for several weeks and forgot about it.

I only summoned the motivation to find it again when I started to worry my existing contacts were going to give me a nasty dose of conjunctivitis – the last thing any girl needs before a trip to Ibiza.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I finally bit the bullet and arrived to find five people standing around the room looking bored, with no-one behind the counter.

For some reason they had failed to follow British waiting etiquette and form an orderly queue, so no-one seemed quite sure whose turn it was.

Next a bloke did a gag-inducing, footballer-style giant sniff, while another started tapping his fingers on the counter.

It was all too much to bear at that time of day.

I was officially in hell and if I had to endure it much longer I would also be late for work.

When I finally got to present my little "sorry" card, it turned out they'd posted my contacts back to the sender the DAY before.

I'm sure there's a lesson here about not putting off until tomorrow what you can do today.

But I prefer to take away this more positive lesson: if a day starts this badly, don't worry – chances are, it can only get better.

[Pat Ostman]

There's so much wrong here I really do not know where to begin!

[apple]

Always thought that the opening times should be till at least 5-30pm or later, new ways of working giving the customer what they want, oh ye it will cost too much, just phone us and we will redeliver it, so how much will redelivering packets cost you