Happy Birthday from the United States Government

So I went to the post office this morning to mail a big envelope.  As usual, I used the automated postage machine.  If you haven't used these yet, you really should.  They're the best thing since automated gas pumps.  If they'd just get those self-checkout lines straightened out, I wouldn't have to be smiley and polite to the grocery clerks either.  Anyway, I was using the postage machine and after the envelope was weighed and the zip code entered, I scanned my credit card and out popped my preprinted $2.66 postage stamp.  Shazam, like magic.  Then something new happened.  Instead of telling me 'thank you' and printing my receipt, the machine told me that the printer was out of paper and it was unable to print my stamp.  Huh?

Now, typically, the "out of paper" message is the only printer message that I believe.  The other messages like, "unable to connect", "broken pipe" and "you need to replace the cyan cartridge so I can print your black and white document, bitch" are totally bogus.  The damn thing is just trying to make me dance.  Printers are fuckers.

Clearly, this time it was mistaken.  I had my $2.66 stamp but it had clicked back to the 'press to begin your transaction' screen.  Without charging my credit card.  I was so excited and my first thought was "Hey, you can ship a package for free on your birthday!"  After a few seconds, I thought, 'Idiot, the machine is broken' and this is the early stages of my impending dementia. But it could happen, right?  The US Postal Service could certainly use a new approach to customer appreciation, like a free slice of pie on your birthday at the Village Inn or a free cone at Ben and Jerry's.  And if they let it happen on the sly, without a big ad campaign, like a happy accident, then people would be all giddy about going to mail a package instead of standing in the kitchen and deciding whether or not to apply all of the stamps they can find in the junk drawer and seeing how far it'll get, of course that can be fun too, will it get there? will Tina have to pay $1.00 when it gets there? cause I could just mail a dollar to her but I'm out of stamps now so I have to go to the post office, ugh, I hate going to the post office, OH, maybe this time it'll be free....

Or maybe this is why the post office is going bankrupt.