...I can make it anywhere!

I also wanted to tell you all about my other New York experience yesterday morning, which was trying to send one package and pick up another at my friendly local South Bronx post office. And by friendly I mean... well...
Ok, firstly, I had to be at work at ten and I normally leave my house around 9:15. So I figured, if I left the house before nine and got to the Post Office right when it opened, I'd beat the inevitable line and get to work on time. Well, after finding the Post Office, which would not have been possible without Connor's help since he's been there before and the Post Office building looks kind of like a really dirty and chicken-wired methodone clinic from the outside, upon walking in there was already a line of at least 20 people. It couldn't have been more than 5 after 9:00.
This didn't bode well, since it appeared that the people there had been there before and knew that you have to arrive BEFORE 9:00 to get service. I left Connor in line with the big package I was sending to my sister for her birthday, and took my "You've Got a Package that We Were Too Lazy to Take Off the Truck And Leave In the Hallway, As Per Your Previous Request, Which We Will Pretend Not to Have Seen" Slip(I'm a little bitter about the postal service already... long story) to the window marked "Package Pickup" in the other room.
I stood there for a good five minutes in line behind one other lady, who was waggling her hips in a very pissed-off fashion. Nobody was on the other side of the window. Now normally, picking up a package at the New York City post office is an ordeal not to be taken lightly. Wherever it is that they store packages in between "Delivery Attempts" must be located in some sub-basement accessible only by a rope ladder and unlit except for mining helmet lamps or something, because it always takes FOREVER. So I assumed the lady in front of me was just waiting for her spelunker to return with her package.
But after a while I wasn't so sure. There was literally no movement from behind the window, whatsoever, and the BLINDS were drawn over the part that the person usually stands at. Finally I asked rhetorically, in a comisserating tone, "Is anybody even back there?"
She whirled around and shook her head, snapping her tongue over her teeth and drumming her fingers on the counter. "No." She said. "I sent my momma through the other line in there to tell them to get somebody over here, but I ain't seen nobody yet. This ain't what they fuckin told me at the passport office!"
I glanced to the window and noticed a smaller sign offering passport services. Just then I heard a shout from the other room and looked over to see a small woman waving at us - the other lady's momma.
We both went into the package drop-off and postage-purhcase counter room, with the long line, where I got in line with Connor. "Yeah that window's not open today," he told me. "The lady at the counter just told that woman, and now she's freaking OUT." I looked back over to see my friend from the passport coutner and her mother - the small lady who had yelled - involved in a heated discussion with the small woman behind the window. There was much flailing and swearing.
The lady's mother had a mustache, and I don't just mean some dark hair on her upper lip, I mean like a bona-fide, could-be-trimmed-with-clippers, black, coarse-haired mustache. That's the kind of thing you should really DO something about if you ask me. Cultural norms be damned, it's ugly on a man OR a woman. Shave that shit!
Anyway, this duo of angered women continued to yell and scream for at least ten minutes, while the twenty-something of us still in line peered around at each other and the scene they were making. Finally somebody yelled, "Hey, there are other people waiting here! Hurry UP!"
After a good ten minutes of screaming and confusion, the two ladies were given some paperwork and went on their way. The rest of us were all relieved, for the next five minutes, until we realized that despite their being a growing line stretching out the door, and several other people working on the other side of the five windows, only ONE window was open.
And, let me just say, people in the South Bronx are often from other countries. They do not always know how the US Postal Service works. Most of us who were born and raised here don't even know how it works because the 'workings' of the Postal Service don't actually WORK. So basically everyone in line seemed to assume that they would be able to perform some sort of action (buying postage/dropping off a package/picking up a package/doing anything vaguely mail-related) that they were informed they could not in fact perform when they got to the window. It took FOREVER.
We were in line for so long that the guy in line behind us, this very large man with a beard, actually began to SNORE while standing there. He FELL ASLEEP on his feet.
Uck.
Anyway, eventually they opened up a second window and things began to move along. Sometime around 9:35 I stepped up to the window. Connor put our big box up on the scale, and we immediately got a chuckle, a head-shake, and a hopeless tongue-clicking from the woman, who informed us that we couldn't put the address on the END of the box, we had to put it on the LONG SIDE of the box.
I had flashes of terror at the prospect of being sent back to the end of the line, but she -THANK GOD- said she would take care of it and helped us get postage, etc. As of the time she put it into the outgoing packages bin, I had not seen her re-address it. If my sister doesn't get her present, I'm going to be angry.
Anyway, at this time we realized that Connor did not have his $81 monthly metro card and both proceeded to flip out because he wasn't sure if he'd dropped it at the bar with his classmates the night before.
Meanwhile, the lady had put on her mining helmet for the foray into the caverns of package pick-up storage, so we had plenty of time to work ourselves into a tizzy about how long this was all taking, where the hell Connor's metro card could be, whether my package would get where it was going, how late we would be to work, etc...
Finally the woman returned with my package and all was well.
I was only 15 minutes late to work.

...this story has a lame ending...

But it's the point that counts: the Post Office is a den of horrors. And long lines. And moustachio-ed women.