Today I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business and drinking coffee, when I got an email. "The post office has returned a few items due to there being too many papers in small sized envelopes. Please use the larger sizes for motions and bulk mail."

I've been mailing things the same way for awhile now, so I thought it was pretty stupid of the rules to change AGAIN, but who am I to go against the U. S. Post office? I took everything I had to mail out and made sure things were in oversized envelopes and proceeded to work on something more important.

Ten minutes later, the office administrator was at my desk. "Your mail is being returned!" she said, in the same tone of voice one may have used in fifth grade to say "oooh, you're in trooouuuuble."

"I know. I got your email, and I fixed it. Look, I'm using the more middley-sized envelopes now." (Apparently they are called 11s. Who knew?)

"OK. It's just that the post office is going to return things that are jammed into small envelopes."

"I know...it's just that these were all borderline things, and they've been mailed out for months, so now I'm changing my procedure. Again. Problem solved."

About a minute and a half later one of my friends who works in ops walked up with some blank envelopes. They had directions on them, such as "1-7 pages" and "fold in half." I gave him a look.

"Your stuff is getting returned" he said. "Didn't you see these in the copy room?"

"No." I said, indicating the stacks behind me. "Perhaps because all this work I was doing blocked the little signs."

He laughed. "Well, just so you're aware, this is the policy. I know it went out fine before, but we need to stick to this now."

"Already fixed." I indicated my "out" pile."

A few hours later, my supervisor walked up to my desk with a subpoena and a mangled return envelope. "Did you know this was returned because there were too many papers in the envelope?"

"Yes. And I've been using the next size up."

"OK. It's just that we need to use all big envelopes from now on."

"Yes. I've read the email, and I talked to (lady) and (ops guy). See all these labels? All for big envelopes. I'm good."

She laughed. "You're probably tired of having this conversation."

"Yeah, a little."

As SOON as she left my desk, my friend from two areas away stood up. "Oh, Stephanie? Did you hear your mail was returned? Did you know we have bigger envelopes?"

"I feel like stabbing someone in the face." I told her.

"Oh!" She looked surprised, than grabbed a large envelope. "Here, hit this."

So I punched the envelope. Then I tore it into little tiny pieces and threw them all over her desk. I felt slightly better.