Negative 50 Stars ~ Quite Possibly the WORST Post Office in the entire United States !
Here's a hint - if you live in the neighborhood and by some horrible accident or mistake have a package delivered through the Post Office, think and prepare carefully before entereing this branch.
Have a meal and use the bathroom, carry bottled water.
Plan to wait in line, even in the most "off hours" times, for about an hour. Bring multiple forms of picture ID, at least 3x more tht you might reasonably need.
Be very carful in the parking lot, and around the building, everyone coming out is going to be seething mad, and the employees themselves, well, I honestly would not trust them not to steal my purse if given the slightest opportunity. Do not leave children, valuables, or foodstuffs unattended. Lock you car, and watch out.
Ideally bring a friend with a notebook and camera, to document the exchange - you probably will not get your package, and whatever record you made of your attempt will be all you'll have to convince whomever sent it to try again, USING UPS or FEDEX. Failing that, you will have a document of the whole bleak little Kafka-esque circus that is the Post Office. Maybe it will seem funny later, on YouTube.
Count on being treated with sneering hatred, racism, and general loathing, whatever your ethnicity - this branch staff is diverse, but spiteful, stupid, angry, and viciously hateful of all humanity. Kind of like orcs. Be polite or nasty, it makes little difference at this point; you were stupid enough to allow someone to send you a package via the USPS, you now must suffer. (or sometimes, creepilly, they will be fawningly butt-kissingly friendly to you, or to someone else in line, slowing things down even more to discuss the weather in Kualalampoor or some such facinating thing in a sexy, conspiratorial whisper, for like 20 minutes)
Having a friend can help at this point too, sometimes that can be disconcerting, as can the aroma of crack cocaine occasionally being smoked in the back, and the other strange party sounds sometimes heard. (To be fair, I have only personally noticed an obvious crack-being-smoked-right-now-on-the-premises smell at this branch two times.) And of course unsurprizingly, any derranged homeless folks that wander in will be left to the customers to deal with, as they see fit. So...watch your belongings, watch your back.
You might even want to make a cheklist - with check boxes for buying stamps, and then one for getting your change from the stamps. Yes, they are that petty and triffling. Yes indeedy.
If you have a delivery slip, and they refuse to give you the package (they probably will, for the most made-up reasons imaginable too) MAKE SURE YOU GET THE SLIP BACK.
In fact, conside making a photocopy and only giving them the copy until you get the package. I have had them blatently refuse to give back my slip, saying I never gave them a slip, then saying they already gave it back, then going back to claiming I never gave them a slip. Short of jumping over the counter and forceably taking it back, what's to do? try calling the complaint line, what a farce that is.
This is their little game, they want to do this so they can steal and/or destory your package, and then you have no recourse. I'm serious, be careful. I know it sounds paranoid, but go and see for yourself. I have lived in some really "bad" neighborhoods too, and in some half-assed foreign countries, and seen some wacky postal Hi-Jinx (some of the greek ones pretend to go "on strike" a couple of times a day, so they can stand around smoking cigs & drinking coffee, etc.) but nothing anywhere near this icky - it's like crappy horror movie based on Dante's Inferno - the staff must have done some pretty naughty things to get assigned to that dank, musty, boiler-room of a branch.
It doesn't hurt to mentally prepare; pretend you are going into a scary 3rd world hellhole as depicted in a bad expolitation film, or some horrid corrupt eastern bloc checkpoint, or something similarly nightmarish and doomed. Keep your wits about you so you don't get hurt, and don't assume for a second that you will get your own legal property that someone paid good money to send to you: that's not the way they do things at the US Post Office. read more