Snafus and Grumbles

(Priority Box Art by Franck De Las Mercedes)

I wonder how many Gen-X'ers know the origin of the word "snafu" and what it stands for. Snafu is actually an acronym. It stands for "situation normal - all f***ed up". I believe its origin is in WWII, when soldiers used it to make political commentary on their leadership. In my case, however, I think the proper acronym would be "scafu" - situation CRAZY, all f***ed up.

In my last post I reported that I had ordered my textbook, workbook, and tatto machine. All were ordered from Amazon. I love that website, by the way. You can get nearly everything there. Friday, I received my email from Amazon advising me that my books were on their way. Friday night, when I ordered my tattoo machine I noticed that the shipping address defaulted to my old office address. I'll explain.

I live in a townhouse "complex" that gets a little confusing for UPS and FedEx. Confusing enough that I have had 3 packages in the past delivered to the wrong townhouse. So I used to have all my packages delivered to my office. This is an office that I have since closed up - like over a year ago. In fact, the building has been vacated and is now in the process of refurbishing.

Realizing that my class begins in about a week, I knew I didn't have time for anything to go wrong on this delivery. I immediately emailed Amazon to see if there was anything they could do to divert the package to my home. There wasn't. It was travelling via USPS. Dang.

Okay, think think think. Do I re-order now with the correct address, ending up with 2 deliveries and returning the last package to arrive? Or try to retrieve it at the old office? I contacted an old friend that used to work in the same building. She informed me that everyone is out of there now, but she graciously offered to alert everyone at the new building in case it happens to find its way there.

So I go online to the USPS website. I tried to do a "change of address". It won't go through, because they need a credit card with a billing address of the "old address" to confirm my identity. Of course, I don't have a credit card with that address. It was my office and all bills came to my home. And even if I did use my office address as a billing address, this office closed up over a year ago.

Sigh.

So I printed off my "change of address" form from the USPS website and visited the post office that delivers to my old office. This post office is not an ordinary post office. It is merely a sorting post. Signs all over the door and wall saying that it was not a retail center. However, they did offer package pickup. So I rang the doorbell and got someone to come out and talk to me. I explained the situation and was told there was probably nothing that could be done, but "wait here a second, let me go ask someone else." A few minutes later another postal worker came out, I explained, and he offered to personally watch for my package and redirect it to my home. Such a nice guy. I hope it works.

In the meantime, I deleted that old address from my Amazon account. I verified that the tattoo machine is set to deliver to the correct address. And I am hopeful that my new friend at the post office will come through for me.