T’was two weeks before Christmas and all through the ‘hood not a delivery was arriving: nothing bad, nothing good.
In the leadup to Christmas, like any good student with exams to prepare for and The Cascade crosswords to design, I skipped all that “shopping” nonsense and ordered a bunch of presents online. Anticipating last-minute shoppers and the holiday rush, I even gave myself lots of extra time for them to arrive. Or so I thought. They didn’t arrive on that guaranteed day. Or the day after. Or the next Monday. I’m part of a Facebook group for my neighbourhood, and it turned out nobody was getting mail, be it packages, letters, or Christmas cards. There’s nothing that quite puts a damper on your holiday spirit like worrying that the yoga bag your mom’s been not-so-subtly hinting she wants is just sitting in a post office somewhere. FINALLY we were told that our mail lady had broken her arm, then her replacement had disliked the job and stopped doing it, and there was no second replacement. This was never posted on our community mailbox, never told to anyone during the week. Finally, two days before the festivities began, a giant stack of packages showed up in the mail, along with a whole week’s worth of junk mail. Christmas was saved!
I just heard that the mail’s stopped again. Thankfully, the textbook I ordered from Amazon was eligible for post office pickup, so no stress. Except… they just told me it’s already been picked up. What a parcel farce.
Jeff was The Cascade's Editor in Chief for the latter half of 2022, having previously served as Digital Media Manager, Culture & Events Editor, and Opinion Editor. One time he held all three of those positions for a month, and he's not sure how he survived that. He started at The Cascade in 2016.
