The more things change…

The more they stay the same. Especially if you're the post office.

FILE PICTURE: The South African Post Office. Picture: Morapedi Mashashe

A notice in my post office box had me breaking out in a cold sweat the other day.

I don’t empty the post box every day, so it often happens that, when I do, there’s more than just a handful of flyers and envelopes to be sorted. My ritual is always the same: the junk is put on one pile, the important stuff on another, and the third pile is reserved for the mail erroneously placed in my box. It’s a simple sifting process which only takes a couple of minutes.

Then that notice grabbed me by the eyeballs and squeezed droplets of frozen sweat from my pores. It was the notice to renew my post office box.

It’s a simple task really. Go into the post office, fill in the form, pay the money, done.

But past experiences have been traumatic – to put it mildly. Forget the queuing, the screaming at the postal worker behind the bulletproof glass, the begging for a pen, the second round of queuing…

The filling in of the form is the most daunting challenge in the entire process. It’s a never-ending list of questions with teeny-weeny little blocks for the answers.

And there always seems one block too few or too many. How can there be a block open after I have filled in my ID number? Where did I get it wrong? Must I start all over? What if they can’t read my handwriting? Why do they need to know my mother’s maiden name? And my grandfather on my father’s side’s blood group?

With every line filled in, the anxiety intensifies. Scream!

So every year I postpone the torture until that day when I get to the post box and it is locked from the inside.

That day was yesterday.

Well, good people of South Africa, I nearly fainted when the teller informed me the filling in of the form was no longer required.

Typing in the box number, all my details appeared on the teller’s computer screen. The relief was like a kiss from an angel. Promptly followed by a kick in the teeth when I handed over my debit card and the teller said: “So sorry. Cash only. We don’t have a card machine.”

It really does seem that the more things change, the more they stay the same.