Good boy.
This is a fever dream of a story that came fully formed after an experience I had this week at the post office. It makes perfect sense to me but probably won't to others.
‘Cashier number four, please.’
The little light flashed and, with the sort of sigh that suggests ‘about damn time,’ Bruce padded forward towards the Perspex screen that signified the border of cashier number four’s kingdom.
‘Hello, yes, I’d like to send these three books, please.’
‘Sorry, sir, you failed to stay behind the yellow line until the cashier was free. You’ll have to return to the back of the queue.’
Bruce scoffed. ‘Good one, right so one of these has to go Scot-’
‘Back of the queue, you’ll have to be patient.’ She flapped a hand at him and pressed her button.
‘Cashier number four, please,’ the sultry robotic woman sounded almost smug.
With that a pug of a woman shuffled forward and splayed her elbows across the front of the desk, getting close to the clear plastic.
‘I’d like to collect my pension, please.’
Bruce was cut out. He tittered and huffed but the cashier was plainly fixated on the stout woman who breathed condensation across her barrier. Perhaps that was what it was there for, to prevent moisture transference.
The queue was a snake with an ever-growing tail. Bruce had waited patiently for some thirty minutes stuck between said barrel lady and a rather tall sweaty man who smelt like he had soiled himself.
The post office attracted such types. Those who had fallen through the cracks of society. Or those who just could not use a smartphone to save their lives.
Bruce smacked his forehead. There was likely an app that could have skirted all this hassle. A pickeroo or parceluber or some such that would come and collect his books and mail them out to the lucky competition winners.
It was all fun and games when he was whoring himself on socials with the offer of a signed copy of his debut novel but the reality of postage and package gave him a new appreciation for his Amazon Prime subscription.
Now at the back of a queue that would make the lines at Disney blush, Bruce stood sandwiched between two blokes that alternated coughing fits and utterances.
Things like ‘blimey, oh boy, wasn’t like this in my day’ and the like.
It was very likely they said no such thing but they seemed the type so Bruce decided they had.
After forty five minutes Bruce was at the front again. He took delicate care to ensure his feet were squarely behind the peeling yellow line. This was not a fucking train station, there was no danger of being hit by an errant first class letter. Still, the fear of having to queue again kept him firmly the right side of the tracks.
‘Cashier number four, please.’
He counted to three under his breath then strode forward.
‘Hello again, did I walk correctly?’
She nodded with a thin smile.
‘Great, so, I would like to get these three books sent out today, please.’
‘Certainly, sir, if you could just pop them in the padded envelopes and put them on the scale.’
‘Sure, do I buy the envelopes here or?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir.’ She wafted a hand that almost clacked the screen. Bruce startled a little. ‘But you need to have purchased your packaging prior to posting.’
Bruce scrunched his face.
‘Okay. Didn’t know that. Thought you had the envelopes, being the post office and everything. I’ll just pop and bring them here and you can blip them for me?’ He nodded towards the scanner on her desk.
‘Unfortunately, sir, this scanner is not configured to scan non post-office merchandise. You will need to pay at the till in WH Smith.’
Bruce was staggered. He turned to look back towards the shop proper. Yes, it was true. Post offices could not exist on their own anymore. Like many failing ventures they had to be crammed into another successful brand like a set of Matryoshka dolls, but without any charm or joy. The post office was the dirty little secret at the back of Britain’s premier, still failing itself, news agents.
‘Can you hold my spot?’
‘No, you will have to join-’
‘No, don’t say it.’
‘-the back of the queue after you have paid for them.’
‘Cashier number four, please.’
Bruce screamed but it did not matter.
A Great Dane of a man bounded up to the cashier and began his business. Something about an overdue gas bill. He was not rebuffed, he was welcomed and aided with all the muster that the post office could deliver. Bruce just wanted them to deliver his sodding books.
Resigned, he trudged to hand pick some manilla envelopes with puffy bubble wrap interior. He queued for a brisk five minutes until the clerk at the WH Smith till would serve him. An acne-ridden boy that Bruce found alluring in the same way he wanted to pop the bubbly interior of his packaging. He found himself daydreaming if the bubbles would produce pus like the boy’s face.
By the time he returned the queue for the post office was probably visible from space. Tied in length with the Great Wall of China. The joke being, of course, that there were very rarely queues to see one of the wonders of the world. No, that was reserved for something a post box had made ever so simple.
‘I could not send them,’ Bruce said to himself some twenty minutes into this latest waiting game.
This twitched the ear of the lady in front of him. She smelt faintly of roses and dirt and looked poodle-like with the pomp of hair that adorned her head.
‘Oh dear boy. You just have to have patience. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.’
‘It is just a waste of time though. No one is going to read my book. I got like 200 views of my video for the competition. I am a failure and a fraud.’
The imposter syndrome was his queuing companion, it seemed.
‘Nonsense. A failure is someone who spends over an hour and a half queuing only to baulk at the moment of glory. Persist. Persevere. Patience.’
Virtue signalling, but it worked for Bruce.
By the time he reached the front he desperately needed a drink and perhaps a walk around a park.
‘Cashier number four, please.’
Bruce did not speak so much as wiggle his eyebrows in ways that suggested a curious confidence and a despairing distrust of what was about to happen.
But it went well. The cashier took his parcels that Bruce had spent time in the queue scribbling the addresses on. He dutifully plopped them on the scales and was told the weights back as if he needed to know.
‘What are they worth, sir?’
‘About ten quid each.’
‘Okay, that will be £6.50 to send today.’
‘Cool, total?’
‘Oh no, sir. Each.’
Bruce felt his knees buckle. Nearly £21, damn, nearly £25 when he considered the envelopes. All this to get three copies of his book into the hands of people that had simply hit like on a post.
‘Would you like to go ahead, sir?’
Bruce swallowed his rage, pride and irritation like a tasting menu most sour.
The cashier fiddled with her mouse and tapped the keyboard. The sterile white light above her flickered in time.
She pulled a face, somewhere between a groin strain and disappointment.
‘I am sorry sir, but it seems you cannot send this to Scotland.’
‘How come?’
‘It just says you cannot.’
‘I would like to make a complaint, this is ridiculous.’
‘Oh certainly, sir. Here, take this form and fill it in. You will have to get it stamped by me before it can be sent. You can rejoin the queue when you are done.’
‘No, no, wait. Don’t.’ But it was too late.
‘Cashier number four, please.’
Bruce was trapped in a never-ending cycle. The post office would be his forever home.
Then his tail wagged. Wait, his tail.
He felt a pulling sensation at his scalp and all of a sudden he was back.
In the kennel, with Susie the kind lady who brought him his food.
He had a contraption strapped around his head, all wires and soft padding and faintly blinking lights.
‘Well done, Bruce. You did ever so well.’ She ruffled the fur on his head as she unclipped it and put it away.
‘One more session tomorrow and then I think you will be ready to go.’
Patience training for dogs. A simulation of the most excruciating scenario the human developers could think of. An independent author trapped at a post office trying to send copies of his shit book no one wants and no one will read.
You would need the patience of a saint. Bruce the Saint Bernard was a good boy.
By Louis Urbanowski
I get it. And it hit close to home!