"If You Want To Get Specific..."

Canada has very few post offices. In the 1980s, Canada Post became a business... (a Crown Corporation)...not a government service.

To save money, most small post offices were shut down, replaced with postal kiosks in drug stores. The employees in these kiosks work for the kiosk owner, not for the post office.

I was recently in a shopping mall, hunting for a post office. Eventually I found it - not in the drugstore, where I expected to find it - but in the back of the Hallmark card shop. A postal clerk was nowhere to be found, and soon several of us were standing in line waiting.

Eventually a young man in jeans and a sweatshirt wandered over from across the store, where he had been chatting.

I need to add postage to this letter to the USA, I told him. I need a stamp for 80 cents. I already have a 40-cent stamp on it. 

You need to add a dollar, he said, slapping a stamp onto my envelope.

No, I replied. I checked online and letters to the US cost $1.20.

Well, if you want to get specific... he retorted.

I came here to get specific, I answered.

What to do?! The dollar-stamp was already affixed to my envelope... The line of customers behind me was growing. Did I really want to hold everyone up, arguing over 20 cents?

Reluctantly I gave him $1.15 - the cost of the stamp plus sales tax, 20 cents more than I should have paid. I was fuming... It wasn't the money, but the principle of the matter that angered me...

A few years ago, Canada stopped using pennies as currency... (Too small to be bothered with...)

Now I couldn't help but wonder:  Have we actually reached a point when nickels and dimes have also gone out of style?