Now, some "experts" may claim that the next generation is smart. IE. I am smarter than my parents, my children will be smarter than me, etc etc etc. So I am either forced to assume there are some really dumb parents out there that should not have had kids or that that statement is horribly false.
As some of you may know, I do my workstudy job at the one of the dorm's desk. I am currently a "desk associate" and mail clerk. My jobs include and are not limited to logging packages and handing them out when students come to pick them up, selling stamps, checking out equipment to students, and delivering mail. Easy as pie, really. I mostly use the internet or do school stuff.
Being the son of a postal employee, I have been blessed with a more than normal amount of understanding and knowledge of how the United States Postal Service works. I would like to think that most people can tell you what stamps do and how they work. But through my job, I have been discovering that most of these freshmen, these "leaders" of the new generation, are completely stupid.
Case in point, I was working one day and where I can forgive most people for not knowing the current price of stamps (42 cents, better to just buy Forever stamps, I know I did), but I don't know if I can forgive the following event. A doe-eyed student approaches me at the desk and purchases a stamp. He is sending some sort of form to Texas. After buying one stamp and filling the form out a little, he stops, looks at the form and then to me and says, "Will one stamp be enough to get it to....TX.....um.... Texas?" Well, damn me for being raised with Catholic guilt, because I should have said, "No, probably should slap a few more on there." But I didn't. I kindly explained to the young lad how stamps worked.
This was a rare case, and not really the point of this whole rant, but amusing nonetheless. No, the thing that irked me today and is the point that I want to share my frustrations is the case of students receiving the wrong mail. When a student receives mail that isn't theirs they are instructed by signs to hand it to the hall desk worker, where we put it in a box to be sorted through and forwarded along to the right address. Now, I know at home we still get mail for Grandma, Grandpa, what have you, very obviously most companies, businesses, people, etc. don't get the memo that people have moved or died. Moved in these cases, hopefully.
So I get a lot of students who just hand me the wrong mail, maybe say "this isn't ours," and move on, either knowing how USPS works or knowing the drill. But we have gotten these "saviors" of the mail who need to give us their life stories. Like today, awkward young student who came up and said, "This is my room number and the address, but this person is not me." And I of course don't remember the whole speech, but it was longer than it needed to be and you could tell he was maybe bothered by the fact that it wasn't his mail. I have also received people who angrily tell me it is not their mail saying like, "We keep getting this person's mail." To which I mutter to myself, "And you will keep getting it." Of course, when they had walked away.
The real point is that I am glad I am educated and that my dad is a post office employee.
