Post THIS.

I am officially peeved at the combination of the USPS and Canadian Postal Service.

I needed to send a parcel to jacquilynne . 

Nothing special or controversial (secret knitting!), and since I had just sent her a CD in a mix exchange last month, I went prepared:
Contents for the package? Check.
One of my pre-printed return address labels?  Check.
Her address, prewritten on a label lifted from work?  Check.

Because I knew it had to go to Canada via Air Mail, I completed a customs form before getting into the queue.  I grabbed a self-serve padded mailer from the rack, got in line, and while I waited, affixed my return address label and pre-addressed label to the package in the appropriate places.
I get to the head of the line, and, justifiably proud of myself, hand over the addressed parcel, and, in a shocking display of clue, the customs declaration form--signed in both places, and 100% ready to go.  Not going to waste anyone's time today!

So I thought.
"Oh."  says Postal Clerk Lady (NOT my favorite Mike the Mailman.)  "You did all this work, and you need to re-address it.  Canada won't accept packages if the address isn't in block capitals.  And the postal code needs to be on a separate line at the bottom."

What. The. Hell.

"Oh." I say.  "Well, I'll just step off to the side here and readdress it.  You can help other people while I write."
Well, the address label won't peel off.  I'm not going to scribble all over the package, and I don't have a sharpie, so I go liberate a spare Priority Mail (tm) label, intending to rip off the identifying marks and just use the white background.
"You can't use that," says Postal Clerk Lady.
"But I'm going to get rid of the parts that read "Priority Mail," I say.
"It's watermarked Priority Mail in light blue.  You can't use it."
"Okay, I'll BUY one of your CUTE labels then, " I say, starting to get embarrassed.  Mailing the CD last month was not this hard.

So I fill out the label:
JACQUILYNNE LASTNAME
STREET ADDRESS
CITY, PROVINCE
POSTAL CODE
CANADA

Peel off the backer.  Affix to package. (Jacq, if you're wondering why it's a happy kitty jumping rope, now you know.)

Wait for Postal Clerk Lady to finish cutting about 150 postal money orders for a kindly little old lady.
Hand over parcel.
"No, this isn't right.  The postal code has to be at the very bottom." 
"Below CANADA?  That doesn't make much sense to me.  Sorry I didn't understand that."
"Yes." Postal Clerk Lady hands me a pen so I can re-write the postal code below the address sticker.  I'm pretty furious by this point, as she could not be much more condescending about this.
"Sorry.  Has this just changed in the past month?  I swear, it was not this difficult to mail a package to this same person a few weeks ago."
"No, it's SUPPOSED to have been this way since the beginning of the year. Sometimes they go through, sometimes they don't if you don't do it right."

So, all the time I thought I was saving by being little Miss "fill out the customs form first" gets annihilated because I didn't print her address in block capitals. 

I try to salvage this with some humor, because my ears are BURNING with embarrassment at this point.  "Well, I'll have to talk to my friend to see if she has to do this for all her internal Canadian mail."
Postal Clerk Lady is not amused. 

I should have just yelled at her.  It would have made me feel better to shoot the messenger.

I am vain and proud.  I like to look like I know what I'm doing, and her insistence on goddamn block capitals just frustrated the hell out of me.  I wouldn't have minded, except that the CD last month went through with no such fuss.  My paranoid brain insists that she just had to make me pay for the audacity of knowing to fill out a customs form ahead of time.