As Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants. So, why are you here?

I don't like this sort of thing. I never will.

I wandered in to the apartment post office today to discover that my mailbox had been broken into and all my mail was gone. The door still hung open with a broken lock. Now, normally I'd be inclined to say "well, have fun sorting out my junk mail and returning the three or four credit card offers sent to Soha Abdulbaki or Fekrat Alkateb, the previous owners of my apartment," but I'd sent all my DVDs back to Netflix en masse, and today was the day I was getting a whole stack of them. Which means I'll have to contact Netflix about them, and they'll charge me replacement fees on all of them. Another hundred bucks down the drain.

When I wandered in to the apartment complex to ask if the could fix my mailbox, the lady pointed out that she had no real jurisdiction with my mailbox since it's government property and under federal control (who knew my mailbox was U.S. government property? What if they decide to take my mailbox back and use it for nuclear testing? Will I still get my mail?). She then launched into an explanation of why I couldn't hold her personally responsible for the loss of my mail, which was fine because until then, I'd assumed that it probably wasn't her who'd forced entry into my mailbox - though after she led up front with a forceful denial, I decided to add her to the list. I arched my eyebrow and prepared to launch into an inquisition, but she cut me off. I'll go word for word from here on out:

"You really should take better care of your things," she admonished me. "Why didn't you fill out a maintenance request form before this?"

"Well, I did. A couple times. But the lock was only partially broken before, I could still use it. But now the lock's been snapped off."

"Hey, are you sure that it's broken into? Maybe you just left it open last time. I bet that's it." She turns and starts typing on her computer.

"No. It's really broken. The lock is completely gone. And my mail's gone, too."

"Well, I'll try to get the guys to see if they can swing by later today and take a look and see if it's broken or not," she says, working on a spreadsheet. "What's your apartment?"

"It's nine-zero-four."

She makes no move to write this down. In fact, she's already dialing her phone. "Well, if I see the guys I'll tell them about it. Bye."

I hang around for a second to see if maybe the person she's calling turns out to be the maintenance crew to update them on my situation. She's not. I check my mailbox a couple hours later. I'll give you zero guesses on its status.

Moral of the story: don't send me any mail for a week or two.

posted by Ben Wyman @ 2:13 AM