Sometime during the past month was the 150th day we have served as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Northern Ireland. I am keeping a journal that happens to be about 150 pages long so far. For those of you that graduated from San Juan High School and can do the math, this means we are averaging about one journal page per day.[1]
The other day Sister Blickenstaff was again invited by the Sisters to teach with them that afternoon. It is a wonderful thing for her to be immersed in missionary work. She loves the Sisters and she has had many opportunities to teach and testify with them.[2]
While she was off teaching their investigator (and volunteering to bring me back later to answer all his questions about Joseph Smith), she sent me to the post office to mail a couple of letters to America.[3]
Now you would be tempted to think that this is a routine errand.[4] But if you fell into that temptation, you would be wrong, Mr. Know It All. For one thing, in Northern Ireland there is a rule that as you approach a post office, it closes. I am not making this up. Every time I have gone to the post office I have had to go twice. The first time is to make sure they are indeed closed when I arrive and the second time is to see if I can catch them off guard and mail something.
- It is time for lunch.
- Their computer is down.
The Royal Mail (as it is very regally called) has very precise rules. For example, when it is time for lunch, every single one of their 176,000 employees throughout the United Kingdom sit down to eat at the same time. There is no dallying around with the idea than ten or twenty of them could man a customer service window and eat a bit later. Likewise, when the computer is down, not only can they not sell you a stamp, they won’t even let you in the door! They lock the outside door and hang a sign on it that says, “Our computer is down at the minute. We are sorry for any inconvenience. Don’t try to come in the post office under penalty of death.” Of course they are just kidding; they don’t have the death penalty here. If they catch you trying to get in to the post office when their computer is down, they haul you off to debtor’s prison and make you eat salad crème (don’t ask).
Apparently, the entire mail system runs off one computer. It’s an old IBM XT in the Tower of London and when it goes down, don’t get any postal ideas whatsoever.
However, the IT guys are quite good about making sure that the computer never goes down while they are closed for lunch. Because both of them are also having lunch at the same time.
The Royal Mail is running a huge deficit and has been for two decades, coinciding with the rise of Facebook & Twitter as the world’s largest authorities on generally everything.[5] In Wales, the Royal Mail also carries the name Post Brenhinol and both names appear on mail vans and postboxes. It is also compulsory for Post Offices in Wales to also have the name Swyddfa’r Post displayed on the outside of the Post Office. Post Offices in Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland also display the name Oifis a’ Phuist. I’m sure this has nothing to do with running a deficit, but may explain why the Post Office is always closed on your first attempt to post a letter, so to speak.
By the way, at the post office you can buy envelopes and boxes and packing tape, just like in America. But here you can also buy a Coke Zero, a candy bar or even a litre of milk! Is this a great country or what?
Also, and I am not making this up, Royal Mail owns a legal trademark on a specific shade of the colour red.[6] This may explain why the post office closes down for lunch. The workers eat for 30 minutes and spend 30 minutes shredding red envelopes that violate the trademark. This would also explain why some of your mail is never delivered.
Anyway, if you persevere, I have found eventually you are able to sneak into the Post Office without them realising an actual customer is in the building and they have to serve you. Which they are happy to do.
Say for instance you want to send a letter to some place odd, like America. You present yourself and your letter at the bulletproof glass cubicle and slide your letter through a small opening.[7] The Royal Mail Lady looks at it and asks, “To where are you sending this?”
RML: Where?
Me: The States.
RML: Oh, you want to send it to America?
Me: Yes.
RML then slides the letter back to me and asks me to place it on the scale outside the bulletproof cubicle.
Me does that and then slides the letter back through the slot to her.
RML: Would you like to purchase a stamp?
Me: Why yes, that would be brilliant.
RML: Would you like me to stick it on the envelope for you?
Me: (Enthusiastically) Oh, would you?
RML then opens a folder that was manufactured somewhere behind enemy lines during World War II and leafs through pages of stamps until she finds one she likes. She tears it out, carefully, along perforated lines, licks it and applies it to my envelope.
RML: Would you like to mail the other letter you hold in your hand?
Me: I will pay extra just to watch this show again.
And so I do.
Here’s the most troubling part. According to the highly respected newspaper, Daily Mail, I recently learned that in 2010, after using them for 130 years, Royal Mail began to phase out the use of bicycles for mail carriers, due to concerns about their health and safety. What? Were they worried about the health and safety of the carriers or the bicycles? Either way, as a cyclist who safely rides for health reasons, I am outraged![8]
Now I begin to catch a glimpse into the origin of the Royal Mail deficit. You are probably asking yourself why they even need a computer in the first place. That’s easy; the computer tells them when to close down for lunch.
[1] Doing the math was a requirement for graduation from San Juan High School. Being bullied by Wendell Black was optional. I opted out after my first year because I got tired of it. Curtis Mahon encouraged me or I might still be stuck there being bullied. I hope Wendell is happy now; he sure made my life miserable for a year back in the day.
[2] The Sisters are often mistaken for nuns. One of the most frequently asked questions of them is, “Are you nuns?” They respond, “No, but we are missionaries.” To which the reply is, “Oh, so you are nuns?”
[3] Home of the Free and Land of the Brave (politically correctly not referring to the Braves, Indians or any other baseball team).
[4] This is especially true if you are a graduate of an accredited college or university as such institutions generally require one to think at least once prior to issuing one a diploma.
[5] I presume they borrowed the idea from the LDS term “General Authorities.”
[6] Joel, what other kind of enforceable trademark is there? An illegal trademark?
[7] I presume the bulletproof cubicle is there to protect their lunch as the computer is actually located in England, which is on a different island altogether.
[8] Outraged is what I learned to be by reading the letters to the editor in the Daily Universe, the BYU student newspaper that is now published weekly, because, as everyone knows, the only news that’s fit to print happens once a week, almost never at the post office.
