Goofballs on the Job!

There were just TWO instances of goofballs on their jobs yesterday.
1) The Post Office said they had "no further info" about the certified mail I sent on 4/30 from Md. to Calif. It has been 8 days. Turns out, the place I mailed it to DID receive it on 5/5, and the Los Angeles post office "forgot to scan the Certified Mail bar code." FORGOT! Didn't I pay for that service?
2) I called our bank and verified that a check sent to pay off a loan was received. The cust. service person said "You overpaid the loan (they apparently gave us a wrong payoff figure) and there's a credit balance. Did you want to close the account?" UM - the LETTER that accompanied the check said "please close the loan, this is to pay it off." DUH!!! - When someone zeroes out a loan, don't you think they want to pay it off???
- On another note: LENGTHY MEETINGS: I was in a FIVE, yes, 5 hour meeting Tuesday night. People were alloted a certain amount of time for their presentations, because it was supposed to be a 3 hour meeting. Obviously, they didn't heed it. Someone went on for 20 minutes about finding an "extra washer" near a spacecraft! **When I lead meetings, I MAKE people stick to their time. Nothing makes me more crazy than useless meetings where people waste time... Do you have a Meeting story?

Only ONE way to track a letter with Post Office

I've learned a lesson today about tracking a letter with the U.S. Post Office. I recently sent a check by certified mail, and was told I could see the progress of it nightly online at http://www.usps.com/ by typing in the 20 digit tracking number. WRONG. You can only see when it's been delivered. "Delivery Confirmation" doesn't show you anything different either, despite what some Postal clerks have told me. I called 1-800-ASK-USPS, and was told that only the $16.95 Express Mail service can tell you where your letter is each day.
SO, certified and delivery confirmation is useless to track something. Further, if you're sending a CHECK for paying something off, either send it Fed-Ex, or USPS Express Mail. Otherwise, "it's somewhere in the system and we can't know where it is until delivery," said the Post Office Rep. Wonderful. So, after 7 days, I'm STILL waiting for a certified letter with a check to arrive at its destination. The Post office is no help.

People saying "I need to see you in person"

If there's one thing that always puts my stomach in knots, it's when people email you and say "I want to talk to you, but need to do it in person." You KNOW that that almost always means something not good...and it happened today in work. After being unable to contact the scientist that sent me that email this morning I kept dwelling on the request, thinking "what in the world can this be about?" By 3pm I found out. Turned out that it was a revision of something that the scientist was worried was too extreme, but it was no problem at all. So, all the agonizing and stomach churning for nothing (just like Tom told me). SO - NEXT TIME YOU SAY TO SOMEONE "I need to see you in person," give them an idea about what it's about. That's a really unfair thing to do.