The Shoeshine Boy

The customer service windows at the post office in my town are staffed by three women.  One of the women is older and quiet.  The second is middle-aged, bitter and ontologically resentful.  The third is younger and quite pleasant.  The women do not share one eye between the three of them – but it would make good copy, if they did.

Each time I line up for services, I jockey for a place with the older woman or the younger woman.  Each time I am assigned a session with the middle-aged woman, I groan.  She speaks on her cell phone as she serves me.  She refuses to fill out certified mailing labels.  She refuses to stick certified mailing labels that I fill out on envelopes.  Sometimes, she refuses to give me a printed-out receipt with a tracking number.

She sends me to the back of the line for the slightest infraction.

I recently lodged a complaint about her on USPS.gov.  In the text box, I wrote that she is clearly not cut out for a customer service role.  Because of that, I suggested that she be re-assigned to a non-customer-facing role, or better still, the private sector.  Ten days later, an email from uspscustomersupport@usps.gov, with the subject line “Your USPS Service Request #36194133 Has Been Resolved!”  Here is what it said:

This is in regards to a negative experience you encountered with one of our employees at your post office.  I apologize that this was not a positive experience, and share your concern and disappointment regarding the treatment reported in your complaint.

 We expect our employees to perform their duties in a manner which is both courteous and professional.  Above all else, providing excellent customer service is our goal and we regret you did not receive it in this instance.  Please be assured that appropriate action has been taken to address the issue and prevent a recurrence.

 Please accept our sincere apology.  Every effort will be made to provide you with quality service in the future.  

The next time I visited the post office, the middle-aged woman was sitting where she always sits, chatting loudly on her phone while a customer stood in front of her, trying to get her attention.  Resolved, my ass, I thought, and stuffed my pocket with a pile of certified mail tags in case she decided to ration them.

A few weeks later, I was standing in front of the younger woman with twelve envelopes.  Each envelope contained a five-day demand for rent.  Six of the envelopes were to be sent regular first-class mail.  Six were to be sent certified.  Six deadbeats, twelve envelopes, $32.94.  Another bullshit day in suck city.  The younger woman looked up at me and said, “Hey- I’ve been meaning to ask you – You own mobile homes?”  I said,

-I own mobile home parks, not homes.

-I’ve been meaning to get into that.

-You want to buy parks?

-As a side hustle.

-It’s a great business.

She showed me the cover of a how-to-invest-in-mobile-home-parks book that she had been reading on her phone.  I recommended The Mobile Home Park Manifesto by Glenn Esterson, and told her not to waste her time with New York.  I suggested she try for the northern Midwest.  She said that her sister’s fiancé has family in Arizona, and they wanted to buy there.  I said that that might be a good bet, and wished her luck.

She does not fit the profile of the typical mobile home park investor.  First of all, she works in the post office and she is young.  Second, she is, well, Black.  Her hair is straightened and she has long, multicolored stick-on nails.  The mobile home park industry is overwhelmingly White, both on the owner side and on the resident side.  This is not to say that she should not invest.  On the contrary – she is an ambitious, with-it young person.  Black people have had trouble building intergenerational wealth.  I wish her the best and am happy to mentor her.  She is, however, far outside the demographic that would ordinarily invest in manufactured housing – and she will have a much steeper hill to climb than someone like me.

In 1929, a shoeshine boy gave Joseph Kennedy a stock tip.  That made him think that, if everyone were getting into the market, it might be time for him to get out.  He sold all his long positions and shorted the market just before the crash.  The rest is history – he became a multi-millionaire, he helped found the SEC, and his sons and grandsons created a corrupt political dynasty that today is the butt of many jokes.  Could the postal clerk be a twenty-first century shoe shine boy?