I guess time really is money

As we are moving into this next phase of our lives, the one where we realize money doesn’t buy happiness, we find that time really is money.  I belong to this book club, and one Sunday I wanted to place the next book on hold at the public library.  I wanted to do this quickly.

Quickness is not something at which the public library excels.

First, one of my previous books was a day overdue. I owed ten cents, so I couldn’t place a hold online, I had to go to the library.   So I went to the library, to return my book and pay the ten cents.  I returned the book, and asked if I could please pay the fine so that I can place a hold.  The guy said, no, there is no block on my account, so I’ll be fine.

You can imagine, I wasn’t fine.  I had to stand in line again, and tell him I couldn’t just place a hold.  And then had to walk upstairs AGAIN and use the public terminal to search for the book and place a hold.  All told, about an hour at least of my time.  Trouble over ten cents.

This is the point where I think, couldn’t they have a netflix for books?  Even though we’re being frugal these days, I’d seriously consider paying extra money for extra service.

Similar to the post office.  I personally like the UPS store where you pay a little extra to actually have customer service.  The post office where I go is so terrible, it’s like all of the women behind the counter have contests to see how long it will take them to serve people.

True story:  I was sending a gift to one of my friends, and I had forgotten to put the card inside the box.  So I taped it on the outside.  This is against postal regulations, unless the card is also addressed (or something).  The clerk wanted to have me spend a lot of time to fix this, and I just said, really, it’s no worry, I’ll just take the envelope off and email my friend saying there wasn’t an envelope.  She argued with me, telling me to address the envelope - and I finally had to say, “Look, I just don’t want to waste the time of these people behind me!”  She and the woman at the next window looked at each other and laughed out loud.  I had to be adamant that I didn’t want an extra, time-consuming transaction, and she wasn’t happy about it.

I can’t even console myself that these people are probably making minimum wage.  Probably they are not.

Posted by Marie on October 27th, 2008 under Uncategorized

One Response to “I guess time really is money”

  1. Skum_King Says:
    November 13th, 2008 at

    forget ye not that Bukowski spent a great deal of time working in the PO

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