Australia Post threw down the gauntlet and announced a meeting which they insisted was arranged for 12:00pm. A meeting to discuss letterbox placements. Not to assess the delivery to Warrentinna Road. Not to address the Branxholm Issue.
It was as clear as mud.
Sophie from Launceston may or may not have transformed into Stacey from the facility, and Tracey was no longer required, because there was no need to answer questions. Only to sternly reiterate contradictions under the just banner of Australia Post’s crusade for clarity.
That the “applicable” meeting time was not appropriate was clearly of no concern. Either to the unresponsive tentacle in Launceston or the various tentacles of central command that struggled to communicate with them.
The reality was someone was coming and it was unimportant that someone would have difficulty to attend due to prior commitments. However; the other reality was that whomever came to represent Australia Post might, in the tradition of most busy representatives be delayed. They might end up placing a note under the neighbours door and skulk away to avoid any confrontation.
This seemed particularly likely if the representative was the courier responsible for mail delivery. The meeting time dovetailed nicely with the end of their delivery of mail. Plus the man had previously claimed he was unaware of the initial notification to replace the existing letterboxes. He was the ideal candidate to explain that he knew nothing about the application for delivery to the property, and knew no details about the Branxholm issue. After all, complete ignorance was the skill of a mediator. He could be the sucker for the tentacle and gather the requirements for the placement of the boxes and relay them back to his masters. His masters could then tick the box and do absolutely nothing in the proud tradition of public servitude.
In confirmation neither of the master tentacles of the Australia Post octopus responded to desperate pleas that the meeting be at 1pm.
The battle lines were drawn with the undermanned Cottagers making last minute appeals for additional defenders against the onslaught.
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Australia Post arrived at the meeting at their self-annointed time. When informed that they should wait for the other attendee they were perplexed as to who this might be. Despite having a register of names linking addresses to postal box numbers they wrinkled their brows at the name Michelle. She was not part of the Case despite being named in the early correspondence as the owner of the property who also wished for delivery to the property.
As such it was unnecessary to invite them into the house to wait for a more civilised discussion. Besides these savages had rudely ignored the loud bell and quietly knocked on the door in the hope they could run away before being detected. The chickens who normally rush up to any stranger in the hope of scraps of attention were no-where to be seen.
Apparently the preparations of Australia Post were also deficient at the other end of the trail of extensive correspondence that had resulted in this one-sided appointment. They justified not negotiating a mutually acceptable meeting time as “you knew we could only come out in the morning” oblivious to the fact that the mornings of the previous two days Tuesday and Wednesday, had been nominated and ignored. The fact was Australia Post had offered Thursday afternoons.
Whilst the postal workers expressed their bleeding wounds that their ultimate sacrifice to deign to attend a meeting on their terms was not applauded; the Cottager had another viewpoint. His memory of watching postal workers playing cricket in the depot parking lot as he had his afternoon coffee on an office block rooftop.
The image clouded the Cottagers faculties as he was bullied into accepting that Australia Post was not interested in addressing any concerns that the owner of the property might have. Having determined that these representatives of Australia Post were not accountable for anything that Australia Post had said in the past, and responsibility was above their pay grade, the contest to control the narrative of the Branxholm postal debacle began in earnest.
It was a one-sided battle. The two tentacles representing the Australia Post octopus named themselves as Tracey and Caleb and applied a classic pincer movement against the solitary Cottager trying to delay the offensive until reinforcements arrived.
Tracie submissively took the role of the worker familiar with the irrelevant details. Basically everything that Caleb in his dominant managerial pose was unaware he needed to be aware of. Although on general matters he would certainly defend Australia Post as a paragon of equality fairness.
Time and time again, after confirming they were aware of all correspondence, one of these discombobulated postal tentacles squirted a cloud of ink to camouflage their ignorance of pertinent facts whilst the other tentacle insisted on contrary facts. It was the same tactic applied to every issue raised and merely highlighted that they were talking out of a sphincter that emitted two discordant tones that reiterated their resolve for a total victory.
A victory they denied themselves, because they confessed they didn’t know exactly what they were trying to achieve. Beyond continuously demanding absolute respect for their authority to make statements with no factual basis; their contributions to productive dialogue was to ask “what do you want?” as a followup to dismissing every issue .
At times of weakness in their stance that even their limited capacities could recognise, they retreated to the safe fallback position. They blamed the slimy Contact Centre Tentacle for withholding and they undertook to obtain the information, but not to do anything once it was verified.
Likewise the slippery tentacles suggested that the evidence they had provided to the intermediary tentacles couldn’t be provided to justify their outlandish claims to the Cottager. This would have to come via the Contact Centre.
For example details on the vandalism which was described as “every lock on every letterbox broken and had to be replaced” with the excuse of it happened “before my time”, but not of course before the lying Cottager had taken up residence. They were witness to the fact that he had experienced the event because his key had never been replaced.
The Cottager mused on the ability to fashion over 200 identical locks that fitted the existing keys and install them within a timeframe of a couple of days between postal pickups so that he would not be aware of the problem, but then he realised the window of opportunity had to coincide for every mailbox customers mail pickup habits for them to be equally unaware of the extreme devastation.
The Cottager concluded, as this event has not been observed in over five years, the real question was why it had taken so long to decide upon the devious scheme to transfer vandalism problem to the community? However; given the arrogant insistence of correctness without any accountability to provide evidence, the matter wasn’t worth pursuing at the meeting.
Having smothered resistance on that issue the slimy entrapment continued. They gleefully asserted possession of a photograph of the existing letterboxes that proved that every letterbox owner had received the first notification. However, it was not necessary to provide the evidence to confront the lying Cottager, because they knew how this unimaginable demonstration of receipt was infallible. As was the notification itself; which was clearly for the purpose of informing residents to put a mailbox on the property boundary.
Furthermore, the proof of receipt of this instruction was that the Cottager knew its contents, The explanation that a copy had been provided by the Scottsdale PO was simply scoffed at with a knowledgeable eyebrow raised between the tentacles. Their special knowledge about the Scottsdale tentacles behaviours in the role in supporting Launceston’s crusade to implement a service that no-one in the community knew they wanted.
In retrospect the Cottager realised that he could have challenged the legitimacy of that first communication, but that would certainly been pointless. Neither Tracey or Kayleb had brought any material with them to refer to or take notes. Why would they need to bother when the annihilation of the Cottager was assured by divine patronage of their mission? This was proven, because the blasphemous Cottager was the only one person who had ever questioned anything about their perfectly executed plan.
The Cottager knew better, but attributing anecdotes to the names of customers not present was not worth pursuing.
The response to each issue followed the same pattern of implicit abuse. A sequence of moot points that could be summarised as yet another moot point. The minds eye of the Australia Post employees stared blankly. They were certain the whole meeting was a total victory for the impenetrable armour of sanctified general ignorance.
They had no idea of any issue to be addressed. No curiosity. Just a stolid denial of any reason that the meeting was needed at all. That was a cunning plan that baited the naive Cottager into their trap.
The well-oiled impassive training of dealing with every customer inquiry by categorising them as difficult slowly raised the level of frustration as intended. Half an hour passed with the pretence that Caleb and Stacey were familiar with or responsible for anything. They were frustrated with having to respond to the Cottager’s exasperated chants of “Have you read anything?”
The Cottager likewise was becoming weary of toting up yet another item to the long list that disproved the Australia Post pretences to being reasonable.
So Tracey feinted by answering the question with a question; which the Cottager refused to address until he got the obvious answer that they as usual were unaware of any content of the correspondence they had read. However this time Caleb pressed the numerical advantage in demanding an answer to Tracie and ignoring the established pattern of conceding their ignorance. By now the frustration of the Cottager was simmering at boiling point. As he realised the trap an expletive expression emanated from their victim. He was exhausted by the whole charade and frustrated that the reprieve of reinforcement had not arrived.
It was exactly what they wanted. They didn’t want the deficiencies of their clusterbox fantasy to be spelt out. Caleb pulled the trigger of unacceptable behaviour, demanding the Cottager agree to not express dissatisfaction in a verbal manner. It is an unwritten law of customer service that the use of language often heard everywhere is totally unacceptable and abusive when used as an excuse to disconnect from responsibility to provide transparent customer service.
Ending the meeting was a sentiment that the Cottager totally agreed with, but for different reasons. He didn’t want to go through the clusterfuck of each and every well-documented deficiency with the clusterboxes. Each deficiency that certainly would be new news to the merchants of an impeccable delivery service by a writhing mass of slimy tentacles too self-absorbed in greasing each other to be bothered with externalities. At best the outcome would be a commitment that the octopus might think about it, but not to do anything. Not even to tell all their victims the answers.
The Cottager knew from the start that if a clusterbox is required it would be best to disengage from this farce and wait to see what others erect and whether that works, before committing to his own erection at some yet to be determined location far far away from convenience. So a few more expletives were emitted to justify the swift end to a total waste of his time.
The Australia Post slunk off to have lunch at the local pub where much coarser language punctuates almost every sentence of most patrons.
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That was the meeting that was. Minutes were drafted to be distributed via the Contact Centre, but the email box already had a missile from that tentacle
How was it that an hour after the meeting had ended the Contact Centre was still expecting it to occur? And without knowing the results of the meeting the case was once again closed? Or that Australia Post pleaded no knowledge of external review when their reopening the case coincided with the complaint to the Ombudsman?
The offer of a marker was accepted as a resolution to the location of the clusterboxes that the Octopus was unable to articulate in words.
Or was it? What if some Vandal destroys or moves the marker? Or no-one knew what the marker signifies because the Delivery facility didn’t believe notification was necessary because the Contact Centre assures them that they “have not received further complaints from the community”? Were these acknowledged complaints wrapped in other slimy embraces of other Postal tentacles and that was why Tracy and Caleb were unaware they existed?
The Cottager smiled. Such questions reinforced the decision not to rush into erecting a clusterbox.
As for the conditions for cessation of hostilities. That will be declared by the Ombudsman.