Half Way Around the World, Postal Workers are Equally Impossible

My apologies in advance if you have friends or family members who proudly wear a blue uniform with the USPS logo on the lapel and enjoy defying every rule of customer service...but rest assured the Malawi Postal Service carefully must select equally miserable people to stand behind their counters. Read on:

My friend Kathleen was unsuccessful at purchasing a Post Office box here in Malawi. The wait list for a PO Box is very long and nearly impossible to side step. As a favor, I offered to let her have packages (for Christmas) sent to the Project Peanut Butter address. Her package (mailed on December 19) arrived in Malawi on January 7 and was cleared and delivered to the Blantye Post Office today. I recieved the package slip which read as follows:

Kathleen Klaus
c/o Danielle Matilsky
Project Peanut Butter
P.O. Box 32664
Blantyre 3
MALAWI

At the counter, I presented the package slip and provided my driver's license for identification. The next thing I know, the package is put down in front of me but the woman takes my license. She returns with the manager who then proceeded to tell me that the package does not belong to me. I gently explained that "care-of" means that I am authorized to pick it up. He disagreed. For some reason, my patience with postal people wears thin pretty quickly, so I then insisted that in fact I was supposed to and expected to pick up the package. This quickly escalated to me basically yelling at this guy and he starts to preach about the laws in Malawi and all sorts of bologne. By now, I have spent 20 minutes waiting for this damn thing, my friend Kathleen is in Tanzania to take the GRE, her phone doesn't work there, and I have now launched into the whole, "I work at the College of Medicine, I am late for an important meeting, I work with very sick children and I don't have time for this..." blah blah blah.

It ended with him wanting to keep the package slip (my only claim to this package). Ha. I didn't think so. I reached across the counter, crumpled the triplicate slip in my hand and proudly reminded myself that I am my father's daughter in some ways..."You, sir, are f*cking ridiculous." I stormed out...and slammed my car door.

I really hate the post office.

In other news - the total for the week came out to be around 180 new study enrollments- SOLID. Very exciting! I am devoting this weekend to updating the database, organizing myself and coming up with a plan of how I will wrap up enrollments. We are currently operating at a total of 12 sites! I'm pretty excited. The next few weeks will continue to be very hectic and busy as the hungry season hits full swing. Also, new researchers and visitors are coming all the time, with the next one being a physician trained in Australia named Johanna that will be joining my study team.

And finally - I got my third medical school acceptance - George Washington in Washington, D.C. I am still waiting to hear back from Albert Einstein and WashU, but I'm pretty excited about the prospect of having the choice of three different cities for med school!

-dkm
PS - I reread some of these entries and have to apologize for some of the poor quality writing that comes out. I guess I am using the blog as a quick and dirty snapshot of the things that come up every day!