Exact Address

Folks, I write this post in my spare time, such as it is (which often means the wee hours of the morning). The majority of my weekdays are spent in the employ of the U.S. Postal Service, as one of those lowly front-line vendors you know as Window Clerks, though our official title these days is "Sales & Services Associate."

Having shared this with you, that postal bias should take nothing away from the fact that the Post Office has come out with some pretty cool stamps in recent years. Some of them drawn by some pretty famous people.

There is now an online exhibit called "Trailblazers and Trendsetters: Art of the Stamp" in which you can view 76 different designs from the past. Most, if not all, have been enhanced and enlarged so you can capture all the detail that goes into a tiny square of adhesive or gummed paper.

It's really quite amazing.

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Torrential rainstorms were knocking down power lines all over the county one week. As a customer service representative for our local power company, that meant I was dispatching trucks and linemen to repair problems all day and every night.

When I called back one customer to get her exact address, she replied, "I'm at Post Office Box 99."

Weary from having been on the phone all week, I heard myself say, "Ma'am, we'll be coming to you in a truck, not an envelope."

[Joe's Clean Laffs, with edits]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: Here's a word that eventually found its way into the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary: "McJob." It was coined by Douglas Coupland in his book, Generation X, and describes any type of low-paying, non-challenging job, typically in the service sector of our economy, ultimately inspired by those employed at the McDonald's fast food chain.

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