Misleading

This post is not about George W. Bush and all his lies and misleading; not even about Dick Cheney and his misleading story about people with flowers waiting down the street for soldiers full of ammo in his pockets. In other words this story is not about politics, but about a mislead -well, yes politics after all.

I went to the post office today to mail a little package with a birthday card for a friend of mine that lives overseas. In the package there's also 3 Hershey's chocolate bars that I know she's going to love and perhaps will eat them all at once.

I asked the lady behind the counter about the different prices and speeds for my little package. My friend's birthday is the 15th of this month, and I was hoping she will get it on that date, or perhaps within 2 days or so; but that would have cost me twenty bucks that I don't have. I settle for the regular rate that according to this lady would take "10 days to get there".

Now, when you say "10 days", that means that each day goes from dawn to dusk, and you count from one to ten and that's it, the letter is delivered, right?. Well no. And she didn't say shit about it. She just said 10 days with a poker face that for one second made me believe it was actually 10 fucking days.

Does everybody has to know that it is "ten working days", which run from Monday to right before lunch on Fridays because at that time all these unionized people are just looking forward to head home, turn on their TVs and stuff junk food in their mouths for the rest of the weekend.

I pointed out to her that it was "ten working days", and she looked at me with that distrust in her eyes where I could read her thinking that even though this red haired guy has a weird accent, he knows how shit works around here; better don't mess with him. And right after that I told her that it was like about two weeks, "15 days at least, right?".

"Yes", she said, "at least".

There's a big difference between 10 and fifteen days; just like there's a big-O-difference between having weapons of mass destruction, and having programs to eventually build a weapon.

Just because I have a weird accent don't think that Jean-Francois is that stupid.