You can buy stamps in other places in the U.S. too. I used to buy them at the grocery store a lot. Anything to avoid a trip to the post office.

And you get a free gun and case of beer with every purchase in any Texas store. Chuck Norris created the law when he became President of the State, despite not being born or even raised there.
I'm gonna' go now.

Late nominee for Post of the Year. This was extremely funny; I can't believe it's gone uncommented-upon.

Hmm. I've always thought the PO was the biggest bargain in the world. For 47 cents, some company will carry my letter from the west coast to New York? In only a few days?

Every Christmas I take a big tray of smoked salmon or smoked Tri-Tip, crackers, shmeer, etc to my local PO. for their break-room. All year long I get the best service, they all know my name, and it's the best $20 I spend. They appreciate the appreciation (how long since you've complimented them on their GOOD work?) and I appreciate the service.

Any company with a million employees (or however many) are bound to filter thru a bunch of bad ones before they get canned. I've had the occasional old bat who is sitting thru till retirement, being a broken cog, a big hair-clog in the system. It's maddening, but no matter...the rest are the best.

OK, had my say, flay away.

If you were just buying stamps, why didn't you just get them from the machine?

So basically rather than the post office he could have hit the grocery store, costco/other warehouse store, bank, drug store, stamp machine, mail order, shipping store, and on line.....of course if none of those places had Christmas themed stamps and his wife would check on him I guess the post office was all he had left.

I was wondering that part myself. He said they had to be "Christmas" stamps, otherwise he could have just gotten them out of the machine in the first place.

Most post office branches I've been to only have one person working the windows no matter how busy it is. Bring a paperback.

I knew a former male carrier and she said it wasn't unusual for any carrier on any given day decide that they didn't want to take a large load of mail with them so they would leave a very large amount to take with later on in the week or the following week. That was a big no no of course but they did get away with it and no one in the post office would ever suffer from lack of sleep over it either.

Oops mail carrier for above not male

I live in Florida guys, And I can tell you from personal experience that the Post Office down here in my little part of the world is one of the worst I've ever used. From the clerks at the Office to the mail carriers themselves, I'm pretty sure that they all have some sort of lower primate DNA floating around in their bloodstreams.

Look, The post office itself is going to heck. Ridiculous "13 ounce" rules and first class mail being more expensive than Priority shipping and so on. Its an overinflated, High overhead company that happens to have certain protections that keep it afloat.

I'm with you Christopher. I HATE THE POST OFFICE. If I can avoid it, I certainly do.

But at the same time, I really have to agree with Santa. Taking the cards straight out of my wifes hands and right to the Grocery store / Automated machine to get regular stamps is EXACTLY what would have happened.