It's been a long week--seems like Forever

zzzzz...no, I haven't been sleeping. Don't know why I haven't been blogging and now I'm back with a vengeance....

It's been a rough week for postal workers who sell stamps. For those of you who don't know, stamps increased on Monday by two cents. Being a postal employee, my ears perk up when I hear the post office mentioned on TV and as usual, they started announcing this increase in January. That gives people five months to complain to us before it actually goes up--that is those who are awake. The other half haven't a clue that the rates are going up and then it's our fault for not telling them (let's see I know it's been on the news, in the papers, a sign on our counter for a month). Okay, not everyone is going to get the word. It happens.

The week before the rates go up, if someone wanted to buy a coil of 100 stamps, I would inform them that the rates would be going up the next week. Sometimes a person has a big mailing and is getting it out before the increase, but other times they'd rather wait. If they were just buying a book of stamps, I may not go into the spiel. I am not required to. I am not about to ask them, "are you paying bills, or sending out cards or invitations" or whatever. If they buy 20 stamps and only use five is it the end of the world to have to buy two cent stamps to go with them? For some, evidently, yes.

Today we returned several cards we saw that a woman was sending out with the old postage. Since there were several, we thought we'd better return them so that she realizes the rates went up. Well, when she came into the office, we were reprimanded because we should have told her the rates were going up when she bought the stamps. Now it turns out she bought stamps to send out invitations to a party and that was done before the rates went up--I don't know when but it had to be before last week because these cards being returned were thank you notes after the party. She actually said that we should have known that she would be sending thank you notes too and we should have sold her ones with the new rates when she sent out the invitations at the old rates. It was Friday afternoon and I was tired and I had a hard time dealing with her.

We have been also explaining over and over to each customer about the Forever stamp. For those of you who don't know, the Forever stamp sells for whatever the current rate is. When rates go up, it sells for the new rate, however, any old ones you have that you bought at a different rate automatically become good for the new rate--they are forever good for the current rate.

Although we've tried to explain that when we've sold them, I've had people wanting to buy two cent stamps to go with them this week. More explaining...

Then there are the few people who think that the post office has issued a forever stamp that we will forever charge only forty-two cents for. Why can't we do that, I've been asked. Well, please think about it, people. Just think. That's all I ask.

It's been a long week.