A special delivery of stupidity

I’m tempted to add the US Postal Service to my long list of banned businesses (including, but not limited to: Toys-R-Us, Purrfect Auto Care, the Walt Disney Corporation, Bank of America, Kevin Costner movies, and KFC–which has since been rescinded). That’s right: the Post Office will never get another dime out of me. Kramer was right ten years ago: the Post Office is simply an entity that outlived its time.

I was at the Post Office because I had to ship a package. When it came time to pay for the postage, the clerk refused my credit card because it wasn’t signed in the back. See, I like to think I’m smarter than the average bear. A signed credit card doesn’t protect you from fraud–hell, it just makes it easier for the criminals to pull off a heist. That’s because with a signed credit card, the deviants have an exact sample of your signature. All they gotta do is practice it at home and–viola!–a perfect forgery. But leaving a blank card is pretty foolish too because the criminal simply sign the card and make “your” signature look anyway he wants. So many years ago, I came up with a foolproof system that won’t allow anyone other than me to use my credit card: I wrote “CHECK ID” on the back of my card.

“I cannot accept a card without signature,” the clerk said to me and motioned over to a written sign with the Post Office’s polices.

“I understand if it’s a blank card, but it says ‘CHECK ID.’ Here’s my ID–check it.” The guy was unwilling to budge. He started to peel my postage off the package. “That doesn’t make sense! My bank authorized me to do this.” Not entirely true–but considering all of my credit cards have “CHECK ID” written on the back and this is the first problem I’ve had since I got my first credit card some 13 years ago, it seemed like a non-issue.

But the bureaucratic boob only knew what he was taught. “I can only accept a signed card,” he repeated as he again pointed to the Post Office’s written policy.

“I’ll call my bank right now–you can talk to them. Here’s my ID–this shouldn’t be a problem.”

The moron simply smiled and handed me back my package. Maybe he was one of those sick weirdos who gets off on power trips (after all, this is the Post Office we’re talking about). There was no negotiating with him. No yelling; no screaming. I was trapped–victimless to his powerplay. Never in my whole like did I ever wish someone to have a small penis…until that moment.

“What if I sign my card right now in front of you,” I bartered. “Would that be okay?”

“That would be fine because it would be signed.”

That’s when I blew a gasket. “If I signed it–right here; in front of you–all of the sudden it becomes a valid card?!?!? You still don’t know whether or not I actually am the card holder! Even if I wasn’t me–even if I tried to use an unsigned card–it immediately becomes okay because I signed it? That’s insane!”

“That is our policy.”

Policy. Is there a worst six-letter word in our country? I hate policy. Policy is a word created by managers and bureaucrats–people who don’t know much of anything and use research and statistics for every decision they make. They can’t think outside the box or see a gray area–everything is black and white. Bureaucrats like it because everyone works as one fluid machine. It makes me sick. This whole incident reeked of inane ‘policy’ and little common sense.

The only reason one signs a credit card is to prevent unauthorized users from making a purchase. I understand why a business won’t take a blank, unsigned credit card because the card could’ve been found anywhere and any schmuck can sign it. But when a credit card requests the purchaser present his identification–when the purchaser is willingly able to present it–this shouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately for this Post Office pansy, he didn’t have the intelligence to do anything outside of what he was told. No wonder he had a government job–he probably couldn’t get hired anywhere else.

I took my package to Fed Ex.