Firm Politeness

Every day we get the chance to decide what kind of a day we’ll have. Good, bad, happy, sad, calm, angry. It all depends on how we view the world, and what can be reasonable anticipated as a logical outcome given the information we have.
And that brings me to yesterday’s misadventure.

My husband and I sent letters of protest to federal elected officials about a bill currently before Parliament. Bill C-51 seeks to control alternate health substances to the point of what is tantamount to illegal search and seizure.
Under it if a supplement is deemed bad it can be seized from store shelves without compensation to the owner. Further, a major portion of health supplements would be taken off the shelves. This is due to some extreme regulation nonsense from a few years ago wherein Health Canada has been busily dragging its feet on necessary approvals.
In short, said bill would hose us ostensibly for our own good. That’s a subject for another post, though. Today’s point is about the Post Office.

Bills to Members of Parliament, if addressed to the House of Commons, are sent postage-free. We can rant and rave and rail and thank our elected politicians by snail mail at no cost to ourselves. This is a good thing.

I had a feeling when I popped the unstamped letters in the mail on Tuesday that I’d see them again. I was not disappointed.
Some poor thing at the local outlet of Canada Post put them back in the box with the handwritten message “Postage required.”
I had a choice. I could be upset and stomp down there and tell off someone for being a complete and total idiot. I could rant and rave about not knowing your job and wonder rhetorically how stupid are you? Or how stupid do you think we are?
But, you know what? Everyone screws up and not everyone knows the letters were postage- free. Yes, when you work for Canada Post you ought to know that. But if it’s someone new he or she isn’t going to know everything.

In the great scope of the world this is barely an inconvenience. It is by no stretch anything to froth at the mouth over. I had a choice. I could screech or I could be polite but firm.
I walked the few blocks to the post office, held up the letters to point out the “postage required” notation and said, “No, they don’t.”

The person I dealt with agreed and the matter was taken care of in a few seconds. Whoever wrote the note knows by now s/he was wrong and was spared public humiliation.
A problem was cleared up with firm politeness. It’s how I’d want to be treated. Wouldn’t you?