Namflow

Post Office Incompetence

The single biggest pain in the ass thing to do here in Japan is send money orders from the post office. I can order food, I can get my car fixed when it's broken, I can pay my bills, I can do everything imaginable - except send a freaking money order from the post office.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of sending a money order from a post office here, this is what is supposed to happen:

1) You tell them you want to send a money order
2) They give you a form
3) You fill out the form
4) They give you money order
5) You pay
6) Stuff the money order in an envelope and that's that!

Easy enough you'd think right? Of course not! First off, every time I send a money order, even if I've already sent 4 or 5 from the same post office, they always get this look on their face that looks like you're mom trying to program the VCR. So then they get out these really thick manuals, talk to eachother, and it takes two of them a good 20 minutes just to turn your form into a money order.

But that's the easy part, once they're actually working. All you have to do is wait. The real pain in the ass part is the application. It's long, it has to be written in block capital letters, you gotta write a ton of information, and it'll be a cold day in hell if you only have to write it once. I've had to rewrite the application form because:

1) I wrote my name "Richard Golden" instead of "Golden Richard Louis" as it reads on my Japanese ID.

2) An "U" in my address looked too much like a "V".

3) The incompetent post office personal screwed something up and I had to rewrite the form with no reason given.

4) I wrote my comments about why I was sending money in a comment box on the upper half of the form instead of the bottom half. Now they could have simply ignored the comments in the upper comment box, I could have simply written comments in the bottom half and been done with it. But nooooo, after telling the guy a billion times "Dude this is the freaking comment box, why is there a problem?" and him standing there like a moron I finally gave in and rewrote the form.

I'm convinced they look at my form just to find reasons not to accept it. Normally I send cash home to the parents with my given reason "Money for student loans." Once I sent cash to my friend Elliott cause he lent me some money when I visited him in Hawaii. My reason, "Money for car." So the post office dude took out a copy of my previous money order, and a copy of this one, and asked me why my reasons for sending money home were different. Besides being a complete invasion of personal privacy, what does it matter? I told him "Cause the other one was sending money to my mom, this is sending money to my friend."

Perhaps the single most frustrating money order happened just yesterday. First they were out of applications since they had wasted so many forms making me write it over and over again for no reason. So I waited for a good 15 minutes for them to get some forums. After that I filled it out and handed it in, making sure to put my comments in the bottom comment box. The dude started at my ID card, and my application, and said "Please write your name Golden Richard Louis" like it is on your ID. So I rewrote the whole application cause apparently I don't know how to write my own name. I knew this was bullshit cause the last time I did a money order I simply wrote my name "Richard Golden" and that was that. So after giving him the second copy of the application, fully rewritten by hand, I went to my car to get a copy of my previous money order as proof that "Richard Golden" was ok. When I came back in he called me over and said "You know, your ID says you live in Echizen-cho but you wrote Ota-cho." Quick history lesson: Ota-cho is the town where I love. Recently it combined with three other towns, Asahi-cho, Echizen-cho, and Miyazaki-muta, to become Echizen-cho. But this is still Ota. And every single time I've ever done a money order here I've written "Ota-cho" and it's been fine. But this time it wasn't. I can't tell you how happy I was to slam the copy of my previous successful money order on the table and tell him "Last time Ota-cho was ok." And last time my name was Richard Golden, not Golden Richard Louis.

He breathed heavily through his teeth, as Japanese people do when trying to think of how to get out of an uncomfortable situation. He stared at my old form. He wondered out loud, "Will this be ok?" But he finally decided I had to rewrite the form for a third time. Now, if Ota-cho wasn't acceptable he could have told me that for the FIRST TIME I rewrote the goddamned application. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to call him a fucking moron. But see, with his being a moron, he wouldn't even understand if I cursed him out in English.

And that's the worst part of it - I can't tell the dude he should know how to do his job. I can't tell him "Look last time I wrote the application it was fine, so stfu and do you job." I can't even tell him he's lucky my hand hurts so much from rewriting the application that I can't punch him in the face. If I did I bet I know what his response would be:

"... but could you please rewrite the application?"

Posted by namflow at March 19, 2007 11:01 PM