With apologies to Kafka~
Behind the counter sits a postal clerk. To this postal clerk comes a man from the suburbs who has a package that will only take a few minutes to mail. But the postal clerk is not taking customers at the moment. There are five windows at the counter, and only one of them has a postal clerk sitting behind it. The man wonders if he should have picked a better time to come. But the sign on the counter at the window says OPEN, so the man walks up to the window, hoping to attract the postal clerk’s attention. The postal clerk says, “Please wait your turn behind the yellow line, and don’t come up till you’re called. We reserve the right to refuse service at any time, for any reason. Don’t make me call my supervisor out back.† The suburban man has not expected such difficulties: services should always be available for everyone during normal business hours, he thinks, but as he now peers more closely at the postal clerk with his bored, superior air, his tired eyes, his flesh beleaguered by a sedentary sinecure, the man decides it would be better to wait on the chance his slowly building frustration will find release, however delayed, rather than make a scene and be forced to leave even more frustrated than before. » Read the rest of this entry «