No matter what I do, the USPS Change of Address (COA) snafu team makes the situation worse. It reminds me of this scene in Men in Black 2 in which the MIB headquarters goes into something called Code 101 Lockdown. Agents J & K return to headquarters and Agent J fires a sort of space cannon into the front door.
This leads to just about everything outside (including a hot dog stand) getting sucked into the building. The verbal exchange between agents goes something like this:
Agent K: “Code 101 Lockdown!”
Agent J: “I know, I know! The building gets pressurized. Nothin’ in, nothin’ out. I knew that.”
OK, so the movie gets it wrong. The scientists would say that if a closed system is “pressurized” that means from the inside. Technically what actually happens is a negative pressurization or partial vacuum, because everything gets sucked inside the building.
The situation at the USPS is in Code 101 lockdown because it has sucked in both my online and paper requests for Change of Address (COA) and also has not refunded me the $1.10 they charged my credit card before the system failed to give me a confirmation code for the COA. By the way, that’s backward. The right way for the USPS to do that would be confirm that my input is correct—and only then charge me.
No matter what I try to enter into the dysfunctional USPS system in order to right the wrong, it just gets vacuumed into the system and no definitive solution gets out.
I don’t remember how the lockdown in MIB 2 got solved. And I don’t know how to resolve the USPS lockdown. Maybe get the worm guys to shut down their power?
UPDATE: As of July 2, 3024, the USPS snag may be on its way to being resolved.
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