used to think that the worst place in New York was the DMV. Then I actually went to the New York DMV, about a year ago, and found it to be a fairly painless experience. It was like being shot in the face to discover, after all this worrying, it just kind of tickles.

The Brooklyn Post Office, on the other hand, is an altogether different beast. I arrived this morning at approximately 10am to find a long line of impatient post-office patrons, all of us dumped in this un-airconditioned hellhole. We wouldn’t have chosen each other—Hasidic Jews sweating through their beards and saggy black suits, Puerto Rican mothers letting their children scream and run free, old Korean grocers, me. But there we were, stuck with each other. Why? Because someone, somewhere had made the cruel and grave mistake of sending us a package.

There was only one person handling the package line this morning, a toothless woman in a jogging suit. When I say toothless, I’m exaggerating. She was only missing two teeth. But to be fair, they were the ones in the front. It seemed to take her ages to find each package, as if she were a 10-year-old looking for something under the bed. Pulling out sock monkeys and dirty clothes and busted toys. Could this be it? Did someone send you an Etch-a-Sketch?

“You really need more employees,” one woman said, hand on hip, sigh blown into her bangs. “This is ridiculous.”

There was a mumble of concurrence in the line. “Amen!” said the old black woman in front of me. “Shit, yeah,” said the hipster with the shaggy black hair and the army cap. For a moment, I thought we might revolt. We might stand up, stiff-armed, and demand our packages. You can't treat us like this!" we'd say, lighting our square orange slips and holding them aloft. But then the moment passed, the huffy woman left, and we all stood there staring once more at the ceiling, at the floor, at the children running around unattended. Oh, aren’t they cute? (No, they are not cute. They are a danger to themselves, and they need to be stopped.) There was nothing to do but wait. A friend came in and stood in the line. That was nice. Made it feel a bit less like hell. More like hell with a buddy.

Finally, it was my turn at the window. I wasn’t actually sure what the package was. I get a lot of random promotional packages from music labels, which usually end up in a resell pile of CDs I don’t want, and I was queasy with the idea that I had wasted an hour waiting for the latest Slipknot CD. But it was, rather, a book I had ordered online and forgotten about. Don Delillo’s Underworld. An 800-page book about New York. With any luck, it won’t include the Brooklyn Post Office.