Life in Italy - #LifeHacking the Post Office

Anyone who comes to Italy for even about 36 hours finds out sooner, rather than later, about the notorious Post Office. Their misdeeds are the stuff of legend. Day in, day out when coming across Facebook posts of new arrivals unloading about the umpteenth miscarriage of mail justice that has befallen them, I sort of smirk to myself, smug in my knowledge that while it's cathartic to vent, they ain't seen nuthin' yet.
The Italian Post Office is a singular institution hellbent on making lives miserable. So much so, that I dedicate an entire chapter in my book to it: The Postman Never Rings Even Once. But I truly believe that desperation breeds innovation and it's why we now have email. 
And this is 2016. The Poste Italiane has been growing by leaps and bounds in efficiency, branding, banking, heck even free wifi - better to allow you to bide your time while dozens of octogenarians cash their pensions and then stand in front of the clerk for those 98 additional seconds to tuck away in a safe place their cash, or while people fill out the form - three of them - whilst standing at the counter, because to put them out would incite inmates, errr, clients to take and waste untold stacks of them. Things have changed so much that they're even charging us about 6 times other countries just for the luxury (and it is a luxury brand in my book) of mailing your letter.
But recently, like many of my compatriots, I had to submit my declaration that I do not, indeed, own a television. I went to the post office for the express purpose of mailing the registered letter. Let me just say that the clerk was super nice [another humongous improvement on the days in which she would have instead refused a letter because the address was written in green pen, or you stapled rather than slathered mucky goo all over the envelope to close it, or that your stamps were crooked, or that you wrote too many lines on a postcard, or you wrote below the line clearly demarcated on the postcard, or you requested far too many stamps, or the box was too big, or too small, or there was a slight bulge in the envelope, or that you wrote a note on the envelope, or you wrote England instead of Gran Bretagna...] I could go on. And on. And on. This is no exaggeration.
And so I was quite taken aback when she told me that I couldn't send my letter that way - meaning, in an envelope. I was quite used to the practice that if you sent a letter in an unsealed envelope, it cost less. So we all used to do that. But..no envelope? This was not in my personal annals of inane postal practices. And then...she did this: Risking her electric blue manicure, she set out to carefully craft an envelope out of my letter, employing scotch tape, stamps & staples. It was an engineering marvel. Standing there, it was as if witnessing a surgeon put one final stitch into a dying patient, or Betsy Ross sewing that last star on the flag...It was pure poetry in motion (and I'm sorry, but my surreptitious video does not do it justice...Did I mention it? No cellphones allowed at the counter? You can imagine where they draw the line on actually videotaping employees.)
Italy often has a lot of wild workarounds for what in other places would be straightforward, standard practice. Like the traffic lights all flashing yellow at midnight (click here for Midnight Run post), to keep people from running red ones. Or, side streets  alongside major thoroughfares which I am quite convinced are so guys can pick up prostitutes with ease - without causing traffic jams (anyone riding up the Via Salaria will know what I mean). Recently, our Prime Minister decided that since so many people pat ignored the heinous TV Tax, he would simply tack it onto our electric bills. I don't own a TV and if you want to get my taxation without representation vibe going, this is a fairly good place to start. Thus my registered letter. 
Flummoxed, I had to ask the clerk, just what this was all about. And with a straight face she stated that otherwise, people would pay for and send the registered envelope, empty. Basically, it was nipping a he said / she said accusation assault in the bud. They'd have proof of having delivered a declaration, when in reality, nothing was truly signed and sealed. By forcing you to provide the contents via a document-cum-envelope, well, then it had to be legit. I thought it was so you wouldn't send anthrax or bullets to our friends at the tax office for this highway robbery of a TV Tax - I'm sure they get plenty.
As someone who once paid a car accident of $103 in pennies (which is also illegal, btw), I had to admit, this was one genius move on the part of government. Now, about those Panama Papers??!

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