Kiss My Knits!

They know me pretty well at my local post office, as you might expect after 900 or so packages mailed. I also know my postal clerks pretty well. And with the exception of the jackass who hit me on the head, I like all of them. (Incidentally, I never saw the head hitter again after that incident, so I never got to take him to task. Hopefully he’s somewhere far away from the general public now.)

There’s guy A who always laughs and jokes around, and there’s guy B who always has a smile and a lollipop for my daughter… and then there’s guy C. I’m gonna call him Luigi.

Luigi’s in his late 50’s, I’m guessing. He seldom smiles. He constantly complains. The customers are idiots. The staff are idiots. The management are idiots. Most common expression: the disbelieving headshake, usually directed at some remembered idiocy. Luigi’s been working at the post office for about a billion years, and doesn’t care what anybody says about him. He’ll tell you they can go ahead and fire him; he’ll be happy to go.

Him: “Man, I’m glad they got that automated machine in the lobby fixed. It really cuts down on the general public.”
Me: “But Luigi, if we stayed out there, we’d miss your bright and smiling face!”
Co-worker adjacent to Luigi, whipping his head around: “SMILING?”

But the thing is, like a lot of Luigis, there’s a lot more there than the surface. If you watch, he’s actually pretty patient with each individual customer, for all his grumbling before and after. His co-workers joke around with him because they also know that even though every exchange ends with a complaint about what a dump he works in, he’s a good guy.

I’ve gotten to know him over the years. In trying to talk with him early on to pierce his veil of boredom and exasperation, I learned about the family issues that had him down that day. I backed off when it was warranted, but usually, it wasn’t. He just puts up a good front.

Proof that he’s a good guy: My daughter had a bad day at school one day and decided she didn’t want a lollipop from guy B. He was really, really insistent. Finally I had to explain to him that she was autistic, and she just wasn’t up to a big loud boisterous interaction. Next time we came in, he tried again to similar effect, but Luigi gave him a little gesture and a quiet head shake, and he let it go. Seems Luigi had dated a girl with an autistic son a while back. And we’ve gotten to know each other. He likes Sinatra. He lives in the neighborhood. His kids are idiots (unsurprisingly, coming from him). He still never smiles and the world is full of morons who are ruining his life, but at least now I know it’s all on the surface.

Yesterday, I had a Jayne hat I needed to mail. It was going to a pretty remote location, and if I didn’t get it there quickly, it was going to wind up chasing this Browncoat all over the country. I really needed to get it out ASAP. I got to the post office and filled out my delivery confirmation form.

Me: Oh my goodness! It looks like I left all my credit cards at home!
Em: Oh no!
Me: (amused) Yeah! I know! Oh well!
Luigi: Are you ready?
Me: Well, I forgot my card, I’ll have to…
Luigi, rolling his eyes, waved me up to the counter. He proceeded to use his own debit card to ring up my box. We joked about how I decided I wanted cash back from this purchase, and whaddya know, he was actually smiling and joking with his buddies and me. I talked with Em about it later, when she asked why everybody was laughing. She agreed that it was a very nice thing for the man to do.

This was a long rambling way to tell you about an unexpected act of kindness from an unexpected source. And I guess the morals are that you get out what you put in, and that nobody’s quite what they seem on the surface.

I’m about to head up to the post office, with $5.45 in cash and a plate of cookies. I hope that you’ll take the time today to talk to those around you, and to offer up an extra smile. It can pay off in unexpected ways.