I spent all day Wednesday hanging out in the house, waiting for my work laptop to be delivered by the mailman. After waiting patiently all day for my doorbell to ring, I decided I must have misjudged when my package would arrive. Then Ben came through the door and handed me a “Sorry we missed you” slip informing me that because I wasn’t, I don’t know, standing right next to my mailbox when the mailman came by, I now had to walk over to the post office, pick up my package and carry it home myself.
My experiences at the local post office have been bewildering at best, so I wasn’t in a hurry to put myself through all the lines, confusion, pointless questions and language barriers. Finally, this afternoon I decided it was time to bite the bullet. I reminded myself that just because every other trip has been annoying doesn’t mean this one will be.
So I walk the 9 or so blocks and entered the ominous looking gray building. Of course there was a long line at the service counter and only one person working there. So the first decision I had to make was whether to stand behind the guy getting helped at the “packages to pick-up” counter, where the one employee was stationed, or get in the long line that ended at the empty counters. Previously I’ve been snidely insulted when I needed to pick up a package and didn’t go to the “package pick-up” place but I wasn’t going to cut in front of all these people who’d been waiting longer. I chose the happy medium of standing an equal distance between the pick up counter and the end of the long line to nowhere. This turned out being a good choice because one of the other guys in line also needed to pick up a package and a lady came out from behind the curtains to helped us both.
I noticed the lady paused when I showed her my ID and I suddenly remembered that at work I go by my married name, Lela Gutierrez, but I haven’t changed my Driver’s License yet. I figured the matching first names and addresses would clue her in to the situation but I was starting to get a little worried until she wordlessly handed my card back to me and took off into the bowels of the post office (a land I don’t even want to imagine). When she returned I had to sign my name and, thinking this would make it easier for her to understand the situation, I signed “Lela Hubert Gutierrez”. Big mistake. Apparently, she had thought I was an “agent”, given permission to pick up a package for someone else. I can’t imagine why this would be a better alternative than to be the Lela, who just hasn’t changed her license yet, but apparently it was.
“You’re Gutierrez?!”
“Yes. I just got married and haven’t changed my driver’s license yet.”
“You shouldn’t have things sent to you under that name if your ID doesn’t show it!”
I looked at her and then looked at the package. The addresses were hand written in sharpy and the box was liberally decorated in toddler scribblings. I thought it seemed pretty clear that, unless Dell has started employing 3-year-olds, this was not something I ordered and had sent to me directly from the manufacturer. The more obvious conclusion was that this was something shipped to me from the home of a coworker, who, knowing I am married, used my married name.
She went on, “Now I just have to take your word that you are who you say you are!”
I had to press my lips together to keep from asking her how many Lelas she thought lived at that address and how likely was it that one of those other Lelas wouldn’t notice that I mysteriously had a new laptop when they had been waiting for one?
I would have been kidding, of course, but I figured suggesting I wasn’t the right person would hurt my chances of getting my package, and then I’d have to go home and return another day with my marriage license, or my husband, or a hit man. I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to steel myself to go back there any time soon, even if I had a hit man in tow.