It’s noon on Tuesday. I’ve GOT to pay this parking ticket I got. How must I pay it? Why, in person at the post office.
My local post office is within sight of St. Peter’s Basilica, so it’s a lovely walk. (I thought I’d start by saying something positive.) Although it is open until 7 p.m., the last time I tried to accomplish something there, I was told that the service I needed stopped at noon. There was no sign or warning about this, I was just told to come back the next day.
Not wanting to risk this, I took a break from work to sprint down there before noon. I was greeted with this sign.
For sure, the postal workers are really protesting somewhere, and not enjoying a 4-hour lunch break.
In short, today, for nearly 4 hours in the middle of the day, when the public is on its lunch break and needs the post office to do everything from buy a stamp to pay the mortgage, the post office’s “REGULAR FUNCTION… MAY NOT BE GUARANTEED” (emphasis added) due to a protest ordered by the Postal Workers Union. Indeed and in fact, it was closed.
I don’t want to get political, but the protest might be more effective IF the sign, or someone anywhere, communicated to us what they are protesting about, i.e., what they want.
Is this a legitimate warning? I’m not sure when the sign was put up; the sign is written is in the conditional verb tense, implying the unknown future. If the public had seen this warning in advance, should they have come to the Post Office anyway to chance that the regular function would be, you know, happening? Or should the public have heeded the warning, stayed away, meanwhile the Post Office maybe decided to stay open, losing out on hours and hours of parking ticket revenue?
May I start using this line? May I tell my clients back home that “The Motion may not be guaranteed by tomorrow?” Or, tell my date that “picking me up at 8:00 may not be guaranteed?” Or tell my friends that “remembering your birthday may not be guaranteed?” I’m pretty sure the head of my legal writing professor would explode from passive voice overload.
I have now walked back home, and will be walking back there at 3:00 in order to pay this ticket, hoping that that service is still available after noon. Or before 3:23. Or whatever the parameters are.
The lesson: DON’T PARK IN FRONT OF THE MCDONALD’S IN PIAZZA DI SPAGNA!
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Don’t get me wrong, I held Unions (even italian ones) and unionism in high esteem, but even stranger things happened.
Once I had to solve an issue at Motorizzazione Civile (sort of Department of Motor Vehicles). There was only one desk that could take care of my issue, and there was no clerk at the desk. I was told from his coleagues that he was indeed in the building, but presencing an Union meeting (assemblea sindacale). “Then why everyone else is here?”, I asked. “Because he is the only one member of his Union”.
CLASSIC!!!
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