Yet another reason I can't stand Australia Post

Yet another monumental fail for Australia Post, the most useless cretins of all time.

Here's something I ordered on  Monday afternoon.  It was with AusCretin fairly late in the business day, but was in Melbourne the next morning, and I had it in had by midday Tuesday.  Awesome.  That's how it should be.  I would have been happy with Wednesday, honestly.

So why can't the useless pricks exhibit some sort of consistency?  Here's another item, inhand with them late on a Thursday, but doesn't arrive locally until SIX days later!  (And yes, I goddamn well do expect mail sorting and shipping to be a 7 day a week function).

The highlight of the latter example was picking it up.  You've all no doubt experienced the nice little come-and-stand-in-line-for-fucking-ages card before.  You can elect to have a representative collect your item for you, if you can find someone silly enough to subject themselves to Peabrain Central and the zombie inhabitants.

Here's an example of the card.

If you front up with the card in hand, the Peabrain zombie will insist on seeing some ID.  The fact that you've got the card is not enough, oh no.  If you hand the zombie your driver's licence face up, they will immediately recoil like a schoolmarm from a tarantula when they see the address is different.  If you try to anticipate and compensate for this behavior by handing over the licence with the change-of-address sticker on the back facing upwards... they will immediately turn it over and lock up with the same logic failure.

If you've found someone silly enough to take the card in for you (apparently the handbrake is), you will note that the three fields to be completed are:

Name of agent
Signature of agent
Signature of addressee

A logical, normal person would read this, sign the bottom line and assume all was well.  Not so fast you don't - not at Peabrain Central.

The Peabrain zombie will reject the attempt to collect the item on the grounds that the addressee didn't complete the Name of agent line.  This is despite the fact that they have precisely zero way of determining who actually wrote it in, as long as it wasn't in their presence.  Nor do they have any way of determining that the Signature of addressee is genuine - I mean, how could they?  What are they comparing it to as a reference?

The first (and last) time that the handbrake experienced this little bit of twisted logic, she simply walked over to the desk, filled the card out herself, and walked straight back to present it.  The zombie objected, and rapidly found out that this was a poor idea and not conducive to general harmony in the workplace.  After the handbrake had reduced her to tears and started in the store manager, it was agreed that yes, that would be sufficient, and that no, they had zero grounds to prove otherwise.  (Note: do not piss off people who have worked in call centres.  They have heard every form of abuse going and are quite willing to be on the long end of the stick should the occasion demand it.)

Since this experience, the handbrake just fills the whole thing in herself, takes the card in, and despite the fact that it adds precisely zero value to the process, at least there's no shouting involved.

On the occasion above, I attended Peabrain Central myself, with the handbrake in tow (i.e. wanting to be taken to Saturday morning breakfast).  I presented my card and ID, went through the usual farce over needing to reboot the zombie to clear the logic lock over addresses, and was presented with two parcels.

I queried the zombie on this, and they pointed out that there were two barcode stickers on the card, which I had not previously noted.  The second parcel was addressed to the handbrake, so I handed it to her.  She stood there for about 5 seconds, which in retrospect was the time taken for her internal reactor to go supercritical from a standing start, and then laid into the zombie with vim and vigor.  The grounds for the attack being that it's apparently OK for me to collect a parcel addressed to her with zero authorisation other than I had an ID with a matching street address, but she can't do the same thing with something addressed to me unless there's a totally unverifiable entry on a card beforehand.

I suspect the store manager didn't enjoy that particular customer interaction too much either.  It's never fun being forced to defend a stupid company policy which makes no sense.  At least it gave the handbrake a keep appetite for breakfast, which in turn gave her an opportunity to chew on the manager of the local coffee shop, but that's another story.