Our youngest is almost two years old, so it is time for him to get a passport. He needs to catch up to Lani Shea, who had visited 100 countries by age 2 years, 8 months (Wikipedia entry on Travelers’ Century Club; also this BBC article on Lani’s dad). First stop: Niagara Falls! (Can we see everything that matters to toddlers in one day? Do we actually need to go to the Canadian side? Or if we ride Maid of the Mist will we get a good enough view of the Canadian falls to avoid La Migra?)
The State Department passport application form provides only two options for “Sex”: “male” and “female”. This is true both for the applicant and the applicant’s (not to say “his or her”) parents. Could this be Rex Tillerson’s fault? (see “Proof that being straight and gay are not treated the same in the world of business“) Or do we blame Donald Trump?
Separately, I looked for places where we could go and submit the application (both parents, lots of IDs, etc.) and our local post office showed up at the top of the list. Thursday is the walk-in day for passports. But you can’t go during the lunch break. “Lunch Start” is at 10:00 and “Lunch End” is at 14:00. (There are only three establishments in our town that serve lunch commercially. The farthest from the post office is a 1-minute walk.)
While the conclusion in the title (that individual postal workers get 4 hour lunch breaks) is one possible explanation for the information in the posting (that a post office does not process passport applications from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm), the conclusion does not follow from the information given. An alternative (and to my mind more likely) explanation is that management does not want to staff this lower priority service during the period when demand for other services is likely to be higher and when the office is likely to be short staffed due to multiple employees taking their (one hour) lunch breaks spread out in order to maintain some staffing over lunch.
I’m sure you know that BOTH parents must be present with the child. Getting mom, dad and baby in the same place on a workday afternoon was a big accomplishment for us. In our suburban DC post office drop in passport service, it was chaos like the fall of Saigon. Sooo many babies…so many languages…so much ineffciency.
Wow. My semi-rural post office in CT is a paragon of efficiency. I went to renew (albeit an easy transaction) and the one clerk multitasked my transaction with a gentleman shipping 6-ish packages of t-shirts to various locales. This was at 1:30 or so in the afternoon on a Friday. No restrictions that I saw on times for passport applications. Chalk up one satisfied customer of the USPS.
Following jdhzzz, I’ve done business at several post offices in different areas: although they work for one extremely bureaucratic & procedural national organization, the quality of service can vary enormously. Sometimes clerk-to-clerk variation can be really high even within one office.
Niagara visit. Stay on the American side and have a nice day. Goat Island on the American side is a very nice park. You can walk and see the Tesla statue and have a nice view of the falls and the gorge. Tesla faces the power plant. There is a giant gift shop in downtown Niagra Falls USA that Is a good distraction. The maid of the mist is a fun trip. There is a sculpture park in Lewiston and you pass drive the power plant on the way. You can take the backroads from Lewiston and drive through Love Canal. My food pick in the Buffalo region is Mighty Taco.
Phil,
My rural post office literally closes for lunch every day from noon to 1:30pm.