...about the Postal Service. And not even fun dirty thoughts, but thoughts about incompetence and retaliatory mayhem. :/
It turns out that my royalty statement was mailed out well before the fifteenth so I most definitely should've gotten it by now, and then some. They're only three states away, and even out on the western chunk of the country that's not far enough to justify it taking two weeks to get here. So Lorna said they'd cancel the check and cut me a new one and try it again.
My father-in-law worked for the Post Office for a long time, and the husband says his dad had talked about what happens when things take ridiculously long to arrive. One possibility is that when they grab a mail bag and empty it into a hopper or bin or whatever, they might forget to check carefully at the bottom (which they're always supposed to do) to make sure all the mail actually fell out. Sometimes a letter will get stuck in the bag and the "empty" bag gets tossed to one side. It might sit there for quite a while before it's grabbed again, and if the mail put into it is sent round the Horn to Madagascar on a cargo ship (or even put on a plane to Maine or Alaska or wherever) then it could be a few thousand miles away before anyone comes across the stuck letter and realizes that it got quite a ways off track. So my old statement might actually show up on Monday, or in April, or whenever. I'm just as happy to be getting a new one, though.
It's funny, I'm actually more eager for the statement than I am for the check. [wry smile] I mean, the money'll be great, however much or little it ends up being, but what I'm really bouncing up and down about are the specific sales numbers. Since my last (which was also my first) statement only covered three days' worth of sales on my first story, I'm not taking that as representative over a longer period. (Although if that story and all the others sold seventeen copies per three days, every three days since their publication, I certainly won't complain. :D ) At this point, though, I still have no clue how anything is selling, and that's what I want to see. So I'll just sit here and tap my fingers and glare at the mailbox....
Angie
9 comments:
Oh, man, so frustrating when you're really looking forward to something. As for weirdities of the post office. My brother got a Christmas card back from me around the first of December last year. The weirdity is that it was mailed in November of 2005
Charles -- ROFL! Okay, you win. [grin] And I'm trying to figure out just where that mail sack got buried for all that time. Or maybe the envelope slipped down behind a piece of machinery and it took them that long to move it and notice...?
Angie
I have given up hope on the postal service. I got a wedding gift through them six months after the wedding and their excuse was they didn't see the box (as big as a car) sitting in the corner. Really? Anyway hopefully you will get it this week *fingers crossed*
Sarai -- so... someone tossed, umm, Harry Potter's invisibility cloak over it...? [wry smile]
Actually, something like that happened once, sorta. I used to work for a government contractor, and a friend of mine was a security guard there who worked swing. I was working late one night (which I often did, and the fact that it was getting close to Christmas didn't seem to matter [sigh]) when Rick came wandering by and said hi and stopped to BS for a few. He was sort of stirred up and told me he'd had to report a Mosler missing in one of the other buildings. O_O Ummm...? Mosler is a brand of safe, extremely solid, which means heavy. He said it was only a two-drawer, but even so -- I'd had a two-drawer once and when a floppy disk fell off it and lodged between it and the wall, I couldn't move it enough to get the disk out. Two of us couldn't move it. It took two of the guys and me (and I'm pretty strong myself) to sort of tilt it enough to even get a yardstick in there enough to fish the disk out. So the idea that one was just missing was seriously boggling.
Then I got this idea.... I said, "You know, I'll bet someone tossed a tablecloth over it and put a Christmas tree on it." :D
Rick went all O_O and dashed out.
Sure enough, LOL!
So now I'm imagining someone at the post office near you (or near whoever sent it) tossing a tablecloth over your box and putting a Christmas tree on it. Or a Halloween display or whatever. And then not taking the tablecloth off for six months. Oops!
Actually, that could make a fun bit in a story.... [ponder]
Angie
Try putting in over forty hours a week at the joint.
I work on the machines that sort the mail and let me tell you there are a million different things that can happen to your mail but surprisingly enough 99.99% of the pieces make it without problem.
And for the record back before direct deposit they lost my check on more than one occasion.
OK - they must be having a bad year, at least 4 people told me they did not get Christmas cards from me when I specifically mailed them with stamps and everything. But you always hear about the horror story of one bag of mail that gets forgotten somewhere. Sheesh. Sorry about that Angie! HOpe it comes soon!
Travis -- well, that's twice the bummer, sounds like. :/ I don't usually think about it because I don't get much that's important to me on a day-to-day basis through the paper mail. It just picked a really lousy thing to mess up on, which makes me growly.
Ello -- wow, that's a lot. It sure does sound like your local PO that made the mistake. And thanks, I'm hoping for Wednesday. [crossed fingers]
Angie
Mail trails make for some peculiar stories.
Bernita -- that's definitely the truth. :/ I'd really love to know exactly what happened here and where that letter went, although I'll probably never find out.
Angie
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