A guide to waiting at the post office

Oct. 24, 2014, 5:03 p.m.

So, you’ve opened your P.O. Box to find a little fluorescent green slip waiting there for you. Your package is here, how exciting! Eager to pick up your latest purchase, you walk back to the front of the post office. However, upon turning the corner into the service area, you are outraged to see that there is line of at least 15 people, moving at glacial speed, ahead of you. You walk to the back of the line and slide into place between the poor soul in front of you and the post office’s front door, which you are pressed up against. Things becomes awkward when other people try to enter the building. Now that you’ve secured your spot in line, how will you occupy yourself for the duration of your thirty minute wait?

Here are some tips:

1. Aggressively check and refresh all of your social media and become even more frustrated when there is nothing new.

2. Develop leg stiffness and/or foot pain.

3. Attempt to ease said stiffness with vigorous fidgeting.

4. Stare blankly at the greeting card wall and think fleetingly about sending your grandparents one. Ultimately decide against it.

5. Let your mind run wild imagining what could possibly be going on behind the package pick-up window.

6. Feel your blood pressure rise as you watch people in the other line get in and out of the post office in the same amount of time it took you to shuffle forward two steps.

7. Gaze longingly at the front-of-the-liners.

8. Glare angrily at the same people as they walk past you on their way out.

9. Remain angry — on principle — even as you, yourself, are walking out package-in-hand.

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