#44 My visit to the post office in Kuwait.

Why in the hell would I write about going to the post office? Read on and you will understand.

Boss picked me up around 4pm on one of my earlier days in Kuwait and I asked him if we could make a quick stop at the post office to send some stuff back to the U.S. "We always use DHL but the post will be MUCH cheaper and shouldn't take too long" In Kuwait places close in the middle of the day similar to Spain. We arrived at 4:15 and thought maybe they opened at 4:00.
When we got there a guy was standing at the door and when we asked if they were open he said they have been open for 45 minutes, that they opened at 3:30 but nobody was working. "What do you mean no ones working?" "We have been open, but the people who are supposed to work haven't come in yet, if you come back in an hour they should be here." "Aren't you working" we asked. "I'm just here to tell people that nobody is working"
This was all spoken in Arabic between boss and the man, and when Boss told me I thought it was a joke. "Government jobs in Kuwait are a joke, people are always late, this isn't that strange".
So we headed to a different post office. When we arrived here there were people working and when we showed them what we wanted to send they said we had to put it in a box which we knew. "Should we just tape it and write the address on the box?"
"You can't use tape, it's against the rules. You have to rap the box in white cloth and then stitch the cloth around the box" When Boss translated this too me I couldn't stop laughing, and neither could he.
So we went and found a box after asking at a couple of stores. We took the box into a material store and as soon as the man in the store saw the box he said, "you need white cloth to mail it." Ok, so this happens often and they aren't just playing a trick on us. The man handed us the cloth and we told him we needed it stitched. "I don't do that here, but I can give you a cell phone number of a guy in the post office who will stitch it." We called the guy and he met us outside and stitched it for us for a small fee. When we handed the box to the lady sitting behind parcels she said it's light enough to mail certified or not certified. What's the difference we asked. It turns out that certified is slower and more expensive but guaranteed to get there where not certified can be faster and cheaper but it may never come at all. We said we would like to send it certified. She handed us the box that was nicely covered and stitched with while cloth and pointed to the seat next to her that no one was sitting at. After 5 minutes she got up and sat in the seat next to her to send it certified but first asked why we didn't use DHL, everyone uses it she said. I wonder why?

When we arrived with our friends a few hours from when we started our venture and told them the story they all believed that there wasn't anyone working at the first post office but didn't believe the story of the cloth, and they all asked "why didn't you use DHL? For the record it would have cost me almost 8 times as much to use DHL; now I just have to hope that my packages arrive.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-Albert Einstein