the US postal service: a story of love lost and found again

As any long time readers of this blog know I do not have the best of luck with the post office near my place. In addition to our past whoahs they recently lost a package I sent back to a company for a refund and had no apology or offer to help remedy the situation. Last week Jason realized we needed my original birth certificate asap to apply for a residency in Africa and thus went to our safe deposit box to retrieve it. After going over there he realized we only had a copy so I phoned my mom up and asked her top look for it at her home. She phoned me back right away and said she had a stamped copy and an original and that she could bring it to the Lake house this weekend for me. I reported back to Jason and he said that would not be soon enough as we needed to send this out this week so I called Mom back and asked her to send it in the mail (loud scary music for effect). We both agreed the only way to make certain it would arrive was to certify it and insure it. She rushed over and did it right away for us (as an aside I must award the rock star award to Mom as she is always willing to drop everything to help her kids). She sent it and we waited....next day no letter...next day no letter. Finally, after taking Anni swimming on that incredibly hot Wednesday I arrived home to find the little orange slip saying it was at the Rogers Park Post Office and I could pick it up after 7:30am on Thursday. I went in at around 9:30am Thursday morning and waited in line and when I was beckoned to step forward I presented my little slip and ID, so full of expectation and hope. The nice man named Wayne disappeared into the back to search for it. When he still was not back after 4 or 5 minutes I started to worry and the other customers waiting the the post office from hell line started to give me dirty looks as if I had asked the man to go retrieve my package from India. He returned, no letter, no box, nothing except my sad little orange slip. He reported that he could not find it. After attempting to reason and ask standard questions, ie. "do you think it will show up later? could the carrier still have it? What do I do to get it back?" he warmly said that he had no idea. I love that! He did give me a number to call to reach more people that may or may not have any idea where my letter was. I went home defeated and sad. Upon returning home Jason (who was working from home) became extremely annoyed and called the number. He got a supervisor on the phone who after Jason had gone through the whole saga said "wait, sorry I was listening to someone else can you say that again?" Jason explained again fearing that his head would actually explode from the mind numbing inability for anyone to know what we should do next. After the man listened to the story of me going there, no one knowing what to do and passing the buck to him he uttered the best quote ever that makes me smile, "Oh man, customer service here sucks." Jason promptly agreed and got off the phone before anymore brain cells were damaged. The love for the US postal service was found again I am happy to report as after calling early this morning and asking to talk directly to our mail carrier (he is a sweet man that resembles a skinny Santa Claus with long white hair, Anni flirts with him often) and explaining the situation he had pity on me and said that he was not sure what happened after he dropped it off but he would try to look for it personally and then if he found it would bring it by around 2 pm (our normal mail time). Not only did her personally search through everything he found it and made a special trip over here to bring it to us at 11am!! So, here I sit with my birth certificate in hand and my relationship with the US postal service (although dysfunctional) is still thriving.