In which someone went and moved the main Post Office
... without telling me (let alone asking my permission ;-( ) ... and then lots of other people acted like it had always been at the new location! It's extraordinary how newbies to a locale, especially shop assistants (but also creationists etc etc), create this false view of the world in which everything is invariant before their personal arrival on the scene and that therefore any long-standing residents of superior knowledge, observation skills and/or memory must be mad when they notice the fact that something has changed. It's (a mild case of) 1984 all over again.
On the plus side, at least the massed amnesiac-newbies told me not to bother getting off the bus until the middle of town - where the new (slightly smaller) main Post Office now resides. I wonder how long it will be before it wanders off again. Its previous home had seemed medium old and fairly permanent - but apparently not. The local incarnation of the PO was exterminated quite some years ago now and the next nearest one told me they weren't allowed to stock anything much (certainly very few of the things I've ever tried to obtain from them in their capacity as a PO). Even the main PO no longer has one of the resources I expected to get there. :-/
I liked the new (from my perspective) meet-and-greet-man - who was able to immediately hand me one of the items I wanted and then "helpfully" pressed the ticket-queue-machine button for me, which he'd got in the way of me doing for myself when I arrived, so I could finally join the queue for the other things. Counter-lady wasn't quite on the ball when she asked me whether I wanted a first class stamp for the thing on which I'd already stuck a first class stamp. A bad day perhaps. Medium-management-dude struggled a bit with the concept of me not wanting one of his own set of products; but eventually he worked out that I really did need one of the government NS&I packages which POs in general are no longer trusted to handle, no matter how big they are.
On the plus side, at least the massed amnesiac-newbies told me not to bother getting off the bus until the middle of town - where the new (slightly smaller) main Post Office now resides. I wonder how long it will be before it wanders off again. Its previous home had seemed medium old and fairly permanent - but apparently not. The local incarnation of the PO was exterminated quite some years ago now and the next nearest one told me they weren't allowed to stock anything much (certainly very few of the things I've ever tried to obtain from them in their capacity as a PO). Even the main PO no longer has one of the resources I expected to get there. :-/
I liked the new (from my perspective) meet-and-greet-man - who was able to immediately hand me one of the items I wanted and then "helpfully" pressed the ticket-queue-machine button for me, which he'd got in the way of me doing for myself when I arrived, so I could finally join the queue for the other things. Counter-lady wasn't quite on the ball when she asked me whether I wanted a first class stamp for the thing on which I'd already stuck a first class stamp. A bad day perhaps. Medium-management-dude struggled a bit with the concept of me not wanting one of his own set of products; but eventually he worked out that I really did need one of the government NS&I packages which POs in general are no longer trusted to handle, no matter how big they are.