Short Story: John's visit to his local Post Office was quite a packaged experience.

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Last weekend, John went down to his local post office to post a parcel. John used to have a second-hand bookshop, but now, he was working from home, selling his books online. John had previously bought a box of padded envelopes from the Post Office. Each time that he sold a book, he would use one of these products. John lined up in the long queue, queuing up to get to the counter. After a long wait, John finally reached the counter himself. There was a tired, grumpy, old lady, working there. She seemed very uninterested in what she was doing. John was careful to tell her, loudly, in plain English, that this padded envelope, he had brought in from home. He had paid for it already. He had bought it a long time ago, as part of a hundred pack. John always did this, (tell them about his padded envelope) as otherwise, invariably, they would slug him again, with the cost of the envelope, as well as the current postage amount too. John noticed that a ring of keys was on the weighing scales. The lady briskly brushed these off onto the floor, with a pack of white envelopes. Obviously, she didn't want to touch them in these times of the coronavirus. She weighed John's parcel, charged him, and he paid and left. As John walked to the exit, he checked his receipt. Sure, enough, this careless, non-caring, obnoxiously rude, woman had charged him again for the padded envelope too. John turned around from the exit door, feeling very annoyed now. He marched back to the counter, and he demanded a refund for the padded bag. The lady looked at him nonplussed, vacantly, and said, "Well, next time, speak up about it. Let me know that it was already purchased previously. I am not a mind-reader, you know" John just shook his head from side to side. He was about to say something, when something else happened. Another noisy, pushy customer pushed past John, and she asked the lady serving John, if she had left behind a set of keys before. The counter staff lady just kept serving John. The anxious customer called a nearby manager over, who was supervising entries into the store to ensure social distancing rules were being followed. The manager walked behind the counter, looked around there for a bit, then she saw the keys on the floor, and handed them back to the distressed customer. All this time, the lady serving John kept quiet, as did John. When John got home again and he told his wife this little episode, she said to John, "Why didn't you speak up, saying that you had seen the keys on the weighing scales, and saw them brushed off to the floor." John meekly, or was it weakly, replied that he was just an observer here, and he did not want to become involved. John had had his own problem solved, but should he have said something here, or not, about the keys? What was really going on here then? We all live in our own worlds, unless we have compassion for others, and connect ourselves to their world too, making allowances for happenings that affect us, and trying to make the best of both worlds better, for each participant in each experience. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com John, at home, amongst his books.