Bureaucrazy

In a post entitled Your Money's No Good Here, Jason Dietz at AntiWar.Com relates the incredible hassle he had while unsuccessfully trying to open a bank account, due to new anti-terrorism ID requirements. I had a similar experience at the Post Office.

I wanted to open a new P.O. Box for a business. I currently receive mail at my apartment mailbox. So when I went to open the P.O. Box, they wanted my current address. No problem. They wanted ID. Again, no problem. Then they wanted to see some mail from my current address. Why? They said to prove I lived there. Why do I have to prove that, I said? They had no good explanation, nor could they explain what a person who did not receive mail at a physical address was to do, since under this requirement he obviously would not be allowed to open a P.O. Box. Finally I went home and got some mail, and brought it back. Then they said they had to wait for my mail carrier to come back so she could confirm that I lived there. WHAT?! How can she do that? Yeah, sure, she finally remembered me after I refreshed her memory by reminding her about a package I had asked her about (one mailed to me which the Post Office lost), but surely she can't be personally acquainted with all the hundreds of people on her route. Many of her stops are apartment buildings with multiple residents, whom she never meets. So what's the point of asking her anything? I doubt there is any such requirement, since in legal parlance, it would be "arbitrary and capricious" to deny someone a P.O. Box because the mail carrier can't remember whether they live at such-and-such an address, but the bureaucrats at the Post Office probably misunderstood the actual requirements, or just made up their own crazy procedure. Stupid and Evil.