Short and sweet - I sent in my check for a registration renewal yesterday, putting it in the box just before the postman came in the afternoon. Today, LESS THAN 24 HOURS LATER, my new registration and stickers came back in the mail. (The postman came a little earlier.)
How can that happen? I was literally standing at my mailbox with my mouth hanging open, telling myself the letter must be something else. And to think i was worried because I sent it "late" and only left nine days before the registration expired!
So, the mailman had to pick up (and deliver) everyone else's mail, then take it to the branch office, where it was sent on to the main office for sorting, then deliver it to the county office, where a clerk had to extract and validate my check (among all the others), print the new registration, and get it back to the postman, who took it to the post office where it had to be sorted and then sent to the branch office to be loaded onto the mail truck before it left in the morning to deliver everyone's mail. After it left my box at two o'clock.
It seems impossible. I don't know how it was done, but when someone complains about our inefficient public services, it's going to be hard to decide whether to spit on them or simply roll on the floor laughing.