And the patheticness of our postal monopoly.
 

Hate to tell you this, Rich, but that transaction was captured on security video. As is every transaction where someone hands a postal clerk a package. So yes, if the package blew up, there would be something to help find you. Including, in your case, your clever repartee to the clerk.
 

That may be so...but it has nothing to do with the purpose or value of asking someone to put a name on a package. I mean, do they think that terrorists are complete idiots? Moreover, if something actually blew up, no one would know where it came from, would they? So having video of every transaction at a USPS wouldn't really make any difference, would it?
 

And for what it's worth, I didn't think my repartee was particularly clever—just an obvious response to an idiotic policy.
 

"You think that someone who's sending a bomb through the mail is going to write his real name on the top?"

The clerk glowered. "Sir, that's not appropriate language to use in this facility."

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I'm going to side with the clerk on this one. He doesn't make policy. Go complain to someone who can do something about it and leave the clerk alone. OK, let's agree that postal clerks make too much money, too much security, are slackers, have a big union protecting them when authors don't, etc. But have you ever had a service job, the best you can get without a college degree, where you have to do the same thing, over and over again, while Yale and Harvard grads come in and make wisecracks about what you may think when what you think doesn't matter, you're just do as you're told and hoping to hang onto your job? No fair making an issue out of the clerk's restrained response, "glowering" though he may have been.
 

3:06: For God's sake lighten up...I would have made a similar remark to the postal clerk and I never went past high school...I suppose you would then say it was because I was uneducated. Everybody needs to lighten up, including the postal clerk...he must know it's a stupid policy. Dealing with the public when you have these kind of policies...and I know because I'm a public servant, you have to be able to be tolerant and it helps to have a sense of humour. On both sides is even better...and quit picking on Harvard and Yale.
 

Re 2:40, yes, I can imagine a postmark surviving a bomb blast. I don't pretend to be a security expert, but I am not quite so ready to dismiss this policy as idiotic.

On the other hand, the report of a 9 year old boy talking himself onto an airplane yesterday in Seattle does give me pause!
 

Whatever, I think it's hilarious. I bet the guy was agitated since he didn't know why that was the policy and was afraid to ask.
 

In fact, I've had quite a few service jobs. I've worked construction, I've worked in retail, I've worked in a snack bar, I've washed dishes, I've worked as a telephone operator, taking 6 AM calls from Washington Post customers who didn't get their Saturday or Sunday papers. And if someone said something to me about an obviously inane store policy, I'd probably have laughed and said, "Don't shoot the messenger," or something like that.
 

You would have said that because you belong to a privileged class. (I've seen your bio.) The fact that you worked some service jobs just means your parents weren't so rich that they gave you your pocket money. Next time you wanna share your ire with a postal clerk, remeber what the word "postal" now connotes in our society.
 

The postal clerk is wrong. There is no such requirement.

I have had the same discussion. They told me it was a requirement. It is only a requirement (at that time at least) for junk mail.

Did anyone notice that the security requirement for personally handing in a package went from 16 oz to 13 oz right after first class mail was limited to 13 oz? I think it was done so that the post office could sort through 14 oz packages sent first class and put under th guise of security regulations.

There are also other ways to get a package into the system without the tracking or video-taping per my postmaster.