Post Orifice for Dummies

I sell stuff on eBay.

I don't know why, really. I guess I do it so I can spend money on my cycling habit, guilt free. So, no shit, I buy stuff cheap at the dollar store or on web sites and sell it for a profit like my own little business. This makes me like a grand or two every year.

I guess I also wanted to have my own little business on the side, but don't want to sell out my whole pension and job totally and ruin everything.

Please don't tell the IRS.

And, please don't fall asleep on me. Cus, this blog is going to be exciting.

Not really. It's about the post office. Hey, at least I'm not writing depressing poems.

Here's the thing: I sell cycling caps and (yeah, it's true) baby clothes. Not just regular baby clothes, but camouflage baby clothes! You would be surprised how many babies need to hide in the woods and not be seen. I think it's a real growth area. Also there's always that hunter guy who dreams to himself "I wants to dress baby Bubba Jr. in some camo! Yee hawww!"

When I sell a cycling cap, I fold it up and shove it into a 6" x 9" envelope. It weighs less than 2 ounces. According to the USPS web site, which is about as user-friendly as a digital rectal exam, the postage should be 79 cent. Not "cents", cent, because I have a little gangsta in me today.

I've been putting 79 cent worth of stamps on these things and sending them out.

And they never come back and I have 100% feedback. Yay!

One day, Mikey went to the post orifice in Beavercreek to buy stamps. I brought a cap to be shipped out and shipped it from there, so it would get there quicker because I care about my customers.

They charged me a dollar and thirty four cent!

Oh...snap!

So, to learn more, I went to the Dayton post orifice a couple of days later, with an envelope containing a cycling cap that was exactly the same...

...a dollar and seventeen cent!

And finally, today, I skipped a meeting just so I could drop a cap off and send it out. I told the guy at the counter (Hal) I wanted to understand the postage on these things. Hal told me "they do it by weight".

Wow.

He put the envelope on the scale and told me it would be 59 cent. I said "really!?" all excited and he looked at me funny because I was really actually excited about this. But then, he stuck it into a little tester that was a slot to test if the envelope could go through the mail sorter. My envelope failed from being too fat. So, it was not 59 cent. But...

One American dolla! Damn fat envelope!

I guess my point is; should I be concerned when I go to the post orifice with three exactly similar pieces of postage, weighing and shaped the same amount and I get three different prices and the web site calculator tells me a fourth different price?

I don't want to sound like a baby. But, this makes me want to go hide in the woods.

Bye.