People in Poland often regard the Post as one of the institutions still halfway between communist and capitalist era. Even though it tries to adapt to the new for-profit times in some places, it maintains its old way of doing things elsewhere. The resulting mixture is quite peculiar for those not accustomed to it.

My contacts with the Post are quite rare, but last Tuesday I had the opportunity to enjoy one of them. In that day the legal relations with my developer got so messy that I had to send them an official letter, which, in order to have the expected legal power, had to have Tuesday?s stamp on it.

When at around 10 pm I was approaching the post office, which happened to be Warsaw?s main one, I had already in mind that it was the last day for sending tax declarations by the employers; however, only when I was getting really close, it became clear what this meant in practice.

There was a huge queue of people standing outside the building, which in itself surprised me, since the premises are very large. But after I entered the building it turned out that there were two more queues, one standing just after the entrance and before the main hall, and one in the main hall itself. The last one was supposed to be governed by the automatic number system, but it failed to cope with the situation ? when I tried to print a number, it just spat the paper with a helpless message: ?too many people waiting?.

Consequently, I took the queue next to the entrance, in which I could see how many people are waiting in front of me:

(When I reached for the camera the people standing next to me took notice: ?Oh, at least we will be in the press!?)

Standing in the queue gave more than enough time to ponder all the absurd aspects of the situation: entrepreneurs standing here instead of sending declarations by the Internet; myself, wasting time here because of incompetence of my developer; people bringing dozens and hundreds of letters and having to manually stick stamps to each of them. Despite that, friendly atmosphere in the queue made waiting enjoyable. People around me were busy discussing their businesses and personal transfers in the boards of their companies or foundations.

There was one memorable moment, when I appreciated that I chose to be in my queue instead of one in the main hall, pictured here:

The numbering system finally gave up completely then and stopped to handle even accrued numbers. There was a short moment of confusion; then, a great rumor when people woke up to the new circumstances and started running to take place in front of the counters, followed shortly by the angry shouts of those who suffered in the fall of the old system.

I finally reached the counter around 20 minutes past midnight, but my letter was stamped with Tuesday?s date anyway. I was not surprised ? I learned earlier from the conversations with people that ?today? in the post office lasts well into the night on occasions like this.

The whole experience was so extraordinary that I couldn?t even feel too pissed about this waste of time, when I was heading home.

The Polish Post at first glance seems like to be the worst organization you are able to find. That is, until you take into the account the Italian one. Postmen walking around with cash, selling loans, insurance, books, and what not; post offices open 24 hours a day; all of this comes as a shock to our Italian colleagues. Despite all its failings, surprisingly, Polish Post comes out pretty well in the comparison.