February 2005

Entries
Current Entry
Previous Entry
Next Entry
Archives

Links
Personal Sites
and Forums/Boards
Diaryland
The Hunger Site

Communication
Write to me

The fun started yesterday, when I found a note on my door announcing that it was time to come get keys for the new mailboxes, that we would be told which box numbers were ours when we got the keys, and specifying when the apartment complex office would be open for such purpose. Also in the note was the information that the new mailboxes would be used starting next week. Well, at least that explained why they had built what looked like a mailbox kiosk down near the office.

If anyone has said why this new kiosk system was set up, I don't know it. I suppose one-stop delivery will be nice for the mail carrier, but the placement of the kiosk, and placing all the boxes in one kiosk, is pretty much begging for traffic jams of both the vehicular and pedestrian kinds. I suspect strongly this is yet another case of my apartment complex management fixing something that wasn't broken.

I had gotten the note too late to go yesterday, so I set time to go before work today. I got into the office and the manager gave me my key, with a slip of paper telling me which box was mine. I checked with her to make sure we were keeping our current addresses, just would be getting the mail at a central location, then decided her suggestions that I take a moment to find my box and check the key were very good ones.

Across to the kiosk I went. I found the box fairly easily. I managed to get the key into the lock. Then, nothing. It wouldn't turn, in either direction. I was ready to go back to the office to ask the manager to check into it, but decided that since there were two men standing near the kiosk (one of whom was my mail carrier), I'd first get one of them to check to see if maybe the problem was my hand wasn't strong enough to make the lock work.

The mail carrier was finishing his lunch break and needed to get back to work, but that was fine, since the other man turned out to be the locksmith who had installed the locks. He tried my key, which wouldn't work for him, either. Then he tried it in the locks for the adjacent boxes, saying that perhaps he had mis-installed a cylinder. No luck.

Finally he went to Plan C, which was to go into the mail carrier's part of the kiosk and see if the box number corresponded to my apartment number. And that was the problem. Once he gave me the correct box number, and the key worked in that lock, I went on my way, leaving it up to him to tell the manager that at least one little slip of paper would need to be rewritten.