2293 Mail Conundrums

Sometimes you encounter those government conundrums that violate the ordinary world of logic. Two things along those lines happened to me recently.

First, I got a notification from Amazon that a book was going to be delivered and I could expect it on Sunday, July 13th. Typo, I immediately thought, some glitch in Amazon's bureaucracy. It is bigger than many world governments. 

Then there was a knock on my door about 11:00 Sunday morning. I got to the door in time to see a mail truck driving off and nearly tripped over a package on my doorsill. It was a regular everyday deliver-the-mail truck too. Not a special big FedEx-like van. 

Wow. The biggest semi-governmental delivery service around, that's bound by centuries of civil service bureaucracy, and a single company, Amazon, was able to get them to work on Sundays? Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck together could never do that. Is this another sign of the apocalypse?

Second, I get a form from the government periodically that I'm supposed to fill out to show how I used certain funds. I fill it out every time on time. You don't mess with this things.

But the one I got recently made me wonder. The last line of its instructions said: "If you have already returned a report with the same report period as shown above, discard this report."

Okay... So they didn't receive the report I sent before or they wouldn't be sending this one, right? So although I sent it, they appear to have no record of it. So I just throw this one away anyhow, because I know I sent the report, even if they don't?

Conundrum indeed. Maybe I'll mail it back anyway -- using Amazon. They seem to have some pull with the government. 

America, ya gotta love it.