Mail priorities, crate expectations and White House wormholes

Dear Rachel,

I mail a lot of things for my business. Nearly every time I take them to the post office, a staffer suggests I sign up for some service where I can print my own labels at a discount. What if I don’t want to burn through labels and take up space for postage scales, and sign up for yet another app? What if I want to stand in line and interact with a real person? I can’t figure out why they’re trying to talk me into spending less money and putting them out of a job.

– Boxed Out

Dear Social Butterfly,

Your Priority Mail priorities might just be different than the rest of ours. You mean I could save money AND not have to stand there and talk to someone? Sold. I’m pretty sure your postal employees are only trying to save themselves some mindless labor. Or maybe they don’t like talking to you as much as you think they must. Or maybe they get a kickback if you use Pirate Ship – oh wait, never mind, kickbacks are only for executives.

– Postage due, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

Everyone I know has some milk crates in their shed or the garage. They’re great for storage. They’re also technically property of whatever cow-milking company left them out back of the grocery store. Have we just decided as a society to look the other way? Or could all my friends and I end up being prosecuted someday?

– Gone Bad

Dear Grand Theft Dairy,

First they’re coming for the journalists, and the protesters, and the immigrants, and the leftists, and the poets. Even though taking milk crates is, in fact, illegal, I have to imagine that milk-crate purloiners are pretty far down the list, and the odds are pretty high that you’ll end up in some other targeted group before they get to silencing the pilferers of sturdy plastic boxes. But they’ll come for us all, in the end. So we better band together now, because once they come for their milk crates, there will be no one left to stand for us.

– Stackable and sturdy, Rachel 

Dear Rachel,

I can’t get the image out of my head of cage fights on the lawn of the White House. I can’t stop thinking that it looks like a portal device from a sci-fi show, one that could end up sending anyone inside to another dimension. Like a wormhole. This, I realize, is now my great hope. Do you think it’s possible?

– Open the Gates

Dear Sci-Fi Fantasy,

I could think of some worms to volunteer for the wormhole. I was thinking of different sci-fi movies, and wouldn’t it be great if the “Independence Day” aliens retargeted from the White House to the UFC stage. But your idea is pretty great, too. If it costs to send certain people through the portal, I’ll chip in for shipping. Heck, I’ll even volunteer my new label printer for the job.

– Fire it up, Rachel