The Dreaded Post Office

I’m quite convinced that post office workers are the slowest most inefficient people on the planet.

I think it’s a global problem because when we lived in Sydney I spent at least two days of my life in a queue at Roseville post office and it’s the same here in London.

This morning we had the unfortunate chore of visiting one. This always fills me with dread because it’s located in the back of our local corner store and is run by a painfully slow woman who operates at a glacial pace. She irritates the crap out of me at the best of times but when I’ve got the kids with me it’s multiplied tenfold. She’s probably a nice lady but she’s so freaken slow that one day someone’s going to die of old age in the queue.

As I stood in the line, my two little ones were in the double pram and I had two enormous parcels I was sending to Australia balancing on top of it. Both the older kids were riding their scooters around the shop which I would never normally let them do but today I figured if they’re going to offer such a slow service then it’s just too bad.

Unfortunately where you queue is also the aisle of the shop where they keep all the cleaning products. With one hand on the parcels so they didn’t fall off and the other scrolling through my phone for the address I had to send these parcels to, I didn’t notice Jude pulling all the bottles of bleach on to the floor. Charlie was yelling “I need to do a poo and it’s coming out NOW” and although I don’t speak Polish, I’m pretty sure the guy behind me mumbled to himself “I am never having kids, ever”.

Once I picked the bleach up and after the old lady in front of me withdrew her entire life savings in pennies it was my turn.

Now it’s just not that hard. Weigh parcel, enter in computer, print out stamp, tell sender to fill out declaration form. She probably does the same task dozens of times each day but it just takes her sooooooo long. Ten minutes later we were done and she says .. “okay, they should be in New Zealand in 2-3 weeks”. Nooooo, AUSTRALIA, THEY ARE GOING TO AUSTRALIA you effing moron.

Okay I didn’t say that but I really, really, really wanted to. Instead, I politely corrected her and she (slowly) re-calculated the postage, I wished her a Merry Christmas and left. Because that’s what you do in England, be polite, even though you really want to explode and call someone a halfwit.

Once I’d tidied up all the magazines my older kids had rummaged through and apologised to the shop owner for the chaos, we left and walked home … but not before I watched Luca deliberately ride his scooter through every piece of dog poo he could find on the footpath. But as a very wise Mum of four once told me, pick your battles. This wasn’t one of them.

As I soldiered on and pushed the double pram with two flat tyres home, I thought to myself how only on Tuesday I was feeling so grateful for having my beautiful children and that in a few short days they were driving me mental again.

It’s the cycle of life with kids. There will always be good times and bad. Difficult times and not so difficult times. Days when our kids drive us mental, and days that they don’t. And do you know what? That’s okay.

So we turned the corner into our street and I was greeted by this. The lovely kids from a few houses down were selling home made cupcakes and hot chocolate to raise funds for a cancer charity. Beautiful!

And pffft! Just like that, all the post office drama was forgotten.