webofevil | Post office

A couple of days ago my mother arrived at Worthing’s main post office to be confronted by a queue that stretched out of the door and down the pavement. When she made it through the door she discovered that this wasn’t because the place was particularly full but because a whole area of the floor wasn’t usable as it was, delightfully, smeared in excrement. A member of staff locked the door behind her just as she got in, to give him a chance to clear it up without being surrounded by people. However, one man at the counter had been getting very cross at being made to fill out a form all over again and hadn’t heard any of what was going on. He stomped over to the door to leave and found it locked. Before the employee could hurry over to let him out, the man snapped angrily, “Why’s this bloody door locked? And you know there’s dog sh¡t all over your floor, don’t you? What’s the good of that?”

It’s that last line that gets me. I wish the post office guy had looked at him levelly and replied, “We just thought we’d try it.”