Where I live, instead of bringing mail to my house, the United States Postal Service has set up one of those pedestals with a box lock box with twelve slots where my incoming mail is deposited. So I have to walk about 100 feet from my front door to retrieve my mail. I am sure this is done so that the mail carrier can zip up in their truck and efficiently deal with mail delivery, and zoom off again. Of course, any efficiency in the process for me is offset by the fact that I typically only bother to check the box two or three times a week. Saturday I went to check my mail, and as I walked over, I realized it had been since Tuesday that I had done this last… Well, apparently three days of mail to the Fleischman household is about the limit for my mailbox, as I was greeted on Saturday with an empty box, except for one brown slip of paper, which indicated that because my box was full, all of my mail would have to be picked up at the local post office. Groan!
So, I got in my car, and drove over to my local post office. Of course I was nervous heading over there because nothing good ever comes out of a trip to the post office. This trip, of course, was no 
exception. As I approached the lobby, the people waiting around outside was a harbinger of things to come. I don’t know about how your local PO works, but in mine, you enter and grab a slip with a number from one of those machines. The clerks at the counter call off numbers and then advance the worlds largest LED display up on the wall. My slip said 68 and they were on number 31! Nice. So I settled in for what promised to be a long wait…
While waiting, I started to chat with a couple of other people who were also waiting in the lobby — a younger couple with a baby (who was pleasantly sleeping). We got to talking and the mom said that she wished that this Post Office were as efficient as her doctor’s office. I asked what she meant, and she made the keen observation that when she goes in to see her doctor, they take appointments, and she seldom has to wait too long. She also jokingly waved her little ticket and said in a loud voice intended to be heard, "..and at least at my doctor’s office I AM A PERSON and I am NOT A NUMBER!"
Of course I couldn’t miss the opportunity to make a quip about how Arnold the Democrats in Sacramento want to get government involved, in a major way, with the healthcare system in California. This young mom said, "Yeah, I read that. I thought Arnold was a Republican?"
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August 27th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Jon, your post office story this morning was a treat, worse than mine, so you win. Arnold has become real scary, even tho’ I’ve written him, telling him how to run California! Harriet Nicholson
August 27th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Maybe they feel that Canada’s health care system is being sabotaged by the citizens going to America for serious medical work. But if they made us like them, where would they go? We would all be stuck in the same workers’ paradise. Great.
A government health system will have all the compassion of the IRS, all the efficiency of the post office, and the cost containment of the defense department.
August 27th, 2007 at 12:00 am
At least you got your mail. More than 4 million Californians don’t get health care. And when they end up in an emergency room, then the rest of us pay the Fed Ex rate for coverage. Funny how every other economic power in the world offers health care for all their citizens — except the USA.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Stevie-boy,
“Every other economic power in the world” also taxes their citizens to the point of poverty.
No matter how you slice it, socialism is still socialism.
Go peddle your manifesto somewhere else and tell the idiot Nunez to do California a favor and resign.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Stevie-boy take 2,
For many of those 4 million not having insurance is a choice. They would rather have big screen tvs, new cars and iPhones rather than pay an insurance premium.