I’ve only put my mail on hold a few times since moving into this mail district. The first time it worked as I supposed it should. I told them when I’d pick up my held mail, and it was there waiting for me when I went to get it. The second time was a comfortable repeat of the first. But the third time, things didn’t work out quite so well.

I stood in line over my lunch break pondering the vaulted ceilings and intricate woodwork that adorn our tiny post office, listening to one woman expound on the post office’s ill-advised habit of having only one attendant on duty over the lunch hour, and watching another woman lift her twin boys up so that they could drop pieces of mail one by one into the mail slot. When it was finally my turn to request my held mail, the woman behind the desk disappeared for so long that we began to wonder if she’d decided to eat lunch back there. But no. It was just that my mail wasn’t there. She came back with the news that my mail carrier had “messed up again” (which I thought was an interesting choice of phrase) and would I prefer to go to the distribution center myself to pick up my mail? She gave me directions and I headed off to the low and somehow dead-looking building that is the regional distribution center. I had to be buzzed into the entry way, where a lone chair stood between the outer doors and the inner (and separately locked) doors. Lying on that displaced chair was my tiny bundle of held mail. I left feeling that I’d somehow forgotten to leave a suitcase full of money by that chair in exchange for my released mail.

The next time I returned from a short trip and braved the lunch line at the post office, my mail was missing in action yet again. This time upon calling the distribution center, the woman behind the desk suggested that there were so few pieces of mail held that they could just deliver it to my address later that day. Which they did.

So this morning, when I entered the post office to be greeted by a long line of people waiting to send packages and buy stamps, I was more than a little concerned that I’d be leaving empty handed. In fact, I was so convinced that my mail wouldn’t be there when I had told them it should be that I’d tried to work the system a little. I requested that my mail be ready for pick-up on Friday, and then I went to pick it up Saturday morning. So there was no way there wouldn’t be mail for me, right? Wrong. The man disappeared into the back room, and presently we all heard him call to somebody to see if there was held mail that had just come in. No, she answered. No held mail today. Great. So he returned and called the distribution center only to find that they’d decided I wanted my mail held for 5 extra days. I said no, I’d wanted it held until yesterday. “Well, it has April 25th written on it,” the man protested, “But we can deliver what’s there, if you like. And do you want us to cancel the remainder of the hold?”

Now I realize that I really had been expected to leave a suitcase full of money that first time.