Rant #2,397: Don't Stand So Close To Me

I had a really nice birthday, very quiet, very placid, and I got some nice gifts.

I also had a Carvel birthday cake bought for me by my wife, and it was so good that I gave the rest of it to my mother. We don't need such goodness--and potential source of fatness--in our own home.

And thanks for all the birthday wishes. They made my day.

And yes, as a follow-up to what I told you yesterday, I did send out those two extra CDs I had to people who I thought were deserving.

Both people are from the Carolinas, one from North Carolina and one from South Carolina. They both had compelling stories.

One is a personal health care worker attending to a single client, a person who pretty much needs the person's help 24 hours a day. Because of the existence of the coronavirus, she cannot go home to his/her family, and has not been home for many weeks.

The other is someone originally from Long Island who is out of work, and there are several circumstances for the person to be without a job, and I can really understand this based on my own situation.

So among at least a dozen or so people who told me their stories--not just from the United States but also in Canada and in Europe--I chose these people to get the CDs.

I have no idea if they are giving me bubbameiser stories or they are telling me the truth--I love Yiddish because without having any idea what the word directly means, you can pretty much figure it out by its context--but I believed what they told me. If they are lying, well, it will come back to bite them at some point in time.

And I really, truly, don't believe they are giving me the bum's rush. There are people really suffering out there, and I hope the CDs make these two people happy.

Anyway, I decided to send the CDs out to them by United Parcel Service. The reason I chose UPS over the U.S. Postal Service is that I don't know about your mail, but our mail here is sporadic at best. I know for a fact that mail that has been sent to us that has never been delivered, and probably never will, so right now, even though USPS workers are doing yeoman work during this period, I simply wanted to stay away from the regular mail, so I chose UPS instead.

I was still thinking about that as the morning wore on, but the tip of the iceberg was that by about 9 a.m in the morning, I received an email from a company I do business with, stating that I owed them a payment, they had not received a payment, and their services would be terminated if I did not pay. I won't go into what company I am talking about, but the bill was near $200.

I called them up immediately, and told them I had never received a bill. They told me exactly when they mailed the bill out, and it was in the period that my family received absolutely no mail, and I mean, absolutely no mail, which is very unusual. We at least get junk mail every day of the year, but during this period--about two weeks ago--we didn't get a blessed thing in the mail (this was the same period when I was supposed to get my CD, and didn't).

Anyway, the operator told me that others had called her with the same problem, and her company fully believes that nobody they contacted with a bill during this particular date received their bill in the mail.

So I ended up paying it over the phone, something I normally do not like doing, but it is done now, and you can see why UPS was more attractive to me, at least this time, than USPS was.

Later in the morning, I went to a local UPS store, and as I entered, I saw that there were two people on line ahead of me, one being served, another carrying a big box and waiting behind a line put on the floor to promote social distancing.

I waited on the line behind this person, again behind a line to promote social distancing, and yes, I had my mask on, which I can't breathe to well under, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do, and we are told it is safer to wear the mask, so I do it.

Anyway, the two people ahead of me were tended to, and it was my turn to go to the counter. I tell the clerk what I wanted to do, and she had to go into the back of the store to get the packing materials. As the clerk did that, a woman comes into the store with a box, and she stands right behind me ... I mean about six inches behind me, not following social distancing measures at all.

I saw what she did out of the corner of my eye. I quickly turned around, and did not say a word to her, but what I did is that I pointed to her with my right index finger, got her attention, and then pointed with my index finger to the line on the floor--and she quickly moved back behind the line.

First of all, where are your manners to begin with? I have seen so many breaches of etiquette while waiting on line in Long Island establishments over the years that it makes me wonder how some people were brought up. Don't you normally give people some space when you are on a line, coronavirus or no coronavirus? You don't have to be up people's butts when you are on a line to begin with.

But during these times, waiting on line has become a major battle zone area, and we are told that one way to combat the virus is to stay at least six feet away from the person in front of you when you are waiting on line. You don't even have to calculate the distance yourself, you just use the guides put down by the establishment, and stay behind those lines.

I have seen breaches of this practice all over the place on Long Island, and I would just like to think that this woman simply wasn't thinking. She was in a rush, just wanted to get her package taken care of, and she simply did not think about following the rules we live under right now.

But then again, being six inches from my butt is not going to get her package taken care of any sooner, so I just have to think that she simply was in a rush, doesn't care about what we are supposed to be doing, and doesn't care about anybody else's health and safety.

And this idiocy just doesn't apply to lines of humans. I have also been witness to lines at banks, with people in cars waiting to get their business done, where people are in such a rush that they beep the preceding car when things aren't going as quickly as they would like it to go.

I have taken my mother to the bank to the drive-through several times over the past few weeks, and we have been beeped at several times. One time, the woman behind us not only beeped, but was yelling out the window at us, and I swear, if my mother was not in the car, I would have used some very colorful language to tell her to wait her turn.

And that language would not have included the words "please" and "thank you."

Whatever the case, I mailed out the CDs, it cost me much more than what it would have at the post office, but I felt really good about what I had done, and for one of the few times that I can remember, I did not care about the money I just spent. It was immaterial to the entire scenario.

Now I wait to see when the CDs are delivered, and I hope that it is done prudently, or what prudence is in the scope of the coronavirus and its effect on deliveries.

And I hope that woman that I did not say a single word to learned her lesson ... but somehow, I doubt it. If you feel that you are entitled, you are going to feel that way, no matter what the circumstances.