Stamp of Disapproval (FUSPS)

When Lib and I began planning our wedding, we decided to save money anyway we could: use friends for photography and video, get a nice but affordable venue, and not only use an email for RSVPs, but also make our own invitations.

Lib did an amazing job on the invitations. After a few different incarnations, she settled on a nice grocery baggish paper and vellum with a cute dragonfly motif. She typed and retyped everything so it would be perfect, she maximized the use of each sheet of paper, and she slaved, feeding each envelope individually into a persnickety printer--not to mention her slow-ass computer--but she did it. Then she patiently cut out the different cards with a paper cutter borrowed from school, mounted the printed sheets on the background, and tied them all by hand with raffia (a light hay-like ribbon) and sealed them for shipping. Not to mention she had to hand type each address and format the dragonfly into each address label for the thank you cards. My assistance was negligible in this process. Oh, and did I mention that she stopped at the post office with a completed invite to make sure that she got the appropriate stamps?

Well, she did. The woman told her that standard postage would not do, and she would have to buy 64-cent stamps, but that was to be expected; a minor miscalculation on our budget--no big deal. The only catch, according to the woman, was that the envelope shape was abnormal, so we would have to hand deliver them to the post office because of some special handling. Again, no biggie. So, Lib went online, and after much deliberation and some half-hearted input from me, settled on an elegant monarch butterfly stamp. When they finally arrived in the mail today, she rushed them onto the envelopes, and she rushed into the post office at ten till twelve to hand them to the lady personally.

BUT. This was a different lady (I was in the car so this is second-hand) who immediately said that the envelope was too big and would be 88 cents, to which Lib replied something along the lines of "No, I came in the other day with a completed invite and the lady said I needed the 64-cent stamp." To which the lady replied, "No the envelope is too big," to which Lib replied something about how ridiculous the whole situation was, etc. And if you know Lib, at this point, since she had done everything responsible on her end and had been mislead by an imbecile who obviously didn't know her postage, then you know the exact tone she was using, to which the lady replied, thumbing the envelope, "oh this had a ribbon inside so it is a parcel. That means it will be $1.71 for the postage." Things got a little blurry here in her retelling, but I know she took the envelopes back from the lady and we drove the five minutes to another post office to reconcile the issue there.

At the next post office, the lady also seemed incompetent because a man who was asking her legitimate postage questions which she should have known was told repeatedly to just go check online. Little did she know, she would earn her money when Lib approached the counter. To the postal worker's credit, she did immediately say the postage would be $1.71 cents, even though it weighed less than the requirement for a standard stamp. It turns out, that the envelope was one centimeter too tall, and she kept showing us this on a template that showed it would take at least an 88-cent stamp, that plus the tiny raffia ribbon, so light that it would be carried aloft in a gentle breeze, meant that it would be $1.71.

This is where the supervisor was called in, and as much as she explained that it did not ruin our wedding, Lib would not be mollified--and who can blame her--$171!!! So Lib, raised her voice, and cried, and the lady tried to explain how the raffia creates and uneven surface, albeit one millimeter, so it would have to be handled by a special machine, and that machine is what was costing money, and Lib was upset because now her invitations would look dumb with three stamps, totaling $1.92, and the lady tried to placate her with a story of how she put a regular stamp on her invitations and they were all sent back, and then another supervisor came out and said that if the envelope were thicker but even, it would be cheaper than the raffia, and then another lady said something about opening each one very carefully and removing the raffia, and there was some crying, then someone else suggested adding tacky "celebration" stamps to the monarch stamps, and I made a sarcastic comment about boxing the invitations and shipping them flat-rate, and nothing got solved and we left, but not until after the original supervisor said that even the correct shipping would not guarantee their delivery in mint condition, so I got Lib the hell out of there.

Then we had to drive around to three different post offices to find the 64-cent monarch, and I shelled out the extra $120 to have the whole experience over with. We then sat in the car, and Lib and I put two more giant stamps on the envelopes, which are not even that big, and I took them back in, since she was done with post offices for the day, and hand delivered them as instructed by the USPS, to which the lady replied, "These are beautiful, but they are only 88-cent envelopes, who told you to use three stamps?" to which I replied, "There is a ribbon which makes them a parcel, so they are a dollar seventy-one." She then quietly took them from my box and transferred them to a postal crate quietly. But I couldn't leave it at that: "They are definitely a dollar seventy-one though right?" to which she replied with a not-so-convincing, "yeah." I did not tell Lib this part; I drove home.