Lines at the Post Office

My office has a postage machine, and a mail pick up each day. Very seldom do we ever have to leave the office to mail anything. However, there are a few occasions when I am forced to make a trip to the post office (I am that guy in our small company).

When you are going to the post office, you never know exactly what that trip will be like. Sometimes, I have gone straight through the door and straight up to the counter, and I am back in my car in a two minute round trip. Other times, however, it can be very frustrating.

Today was a good example of the latter. I actually went to two different post offices before I settled into a long line. The first one that I went to had a line out the door and one person behind the counter. Since I was grabbing lunch for a couple of people, I decided not to wait in line. I simply jumped back in my truck and picked up the food and dropped it off at the office on my way to another post office.

This second post office had a line out the door as well. However, there were four people working behind the counter. Even with four people it still took me about 30 minutes to meander my way through the line.

The thing that frustrates me stems from the fact that you really never know how it is going to be when you get there. Post offices don't have a "rush hour" per se. There is no "lunch rush" as you find in a restaurant within a two hour window. At any given moment of the day, the post office could be a ghost town or have a line out the door. I don't really understand that, and being a product of the fast pace society we live in, I would love to know when the "slow times" are for my next trip to the post office. Furthermore, being a planner, I would really like to know what to prepare myself for.