Someone has continued to send me prank mail.
Today, I got:
-a notice of payment due for $26 from Vanity Fair
-a letter telling me "We are sorry to learn that you had difficulty printing the coupon," with a coupon for two Keebler Pie Crusts
-6 bills for magazine subscriptions that the person who is pranking me ordered for "Lena Kochman-Affleck"
-a bill for a magazine subscription for "Lena Kochman-DeCaprio"
-a bill for a magazine subscription for "Lena Kochman-DiCaprio"
-a coupon sent to "Lena Kochman-Efron"
The way that the mail works at the Pine Street Inn is that a staffperson sorts it by last name and puts it into mailboxes grouped alphabetically by the guests' last names. Then, a staffperson writes the names of the people who got mail in a list, one page for each day, that is kept in a binder at the front desk.
I saw that the mail list had my name written several times, even on the same days, because whoever wrote the mail list wrote the hyphenated names created by the person who is pranking me. It's been a few days since I first saw the mail list with the hyphenated names; I haven't wanted to ask for my mail at the front desk when either of the male staffpeople who have harassed me this week was working at the front desk. I also knew that it would probably be unavoidably difficult when I did ask for my mail, because of whatever the person whom I asked would say about the hyphenated names.
When I got to the shelter today, the staffperson who is in charge of the mail told me that she had put all of my mail together. She got the two separate bunches of mail that she had set aside for me. I saw that the mail for "Lena Kochman-DiCaprio" wasn't there.
It took several minutes of arguing when I asked her to check the "D" mailbox for her to check that mailbox for the rest of my prank mail. She kept telling me that she had given me all of the mail that had my name. I told her over and over "Someone is getting mail sent to me as a prank. I am not ordering what's being sent to me. I have to get all of it so that I can cancel all of the subscriptions so that the bills don't get sent to a collection agency."
She kept saying "I know your name and I do all the mail. You have all of your mail."
I showed her the mail list that had my name written several times with another name hyphenated to it. She said "That's not your name, so that's not your mail." The mail that she had set aside for me and given to me was mostly mail that had all the hyphenated names that I've described except for "Lena Kochman-DiCaprio." She kept refusing to check for that name. I kept telling her "Someone is pranking me." Even when she found the envelope that said "Lena Kochman-DiCaprio," she didn't want to give it to me. She said "It's not your name, so it's not your mail." I said "There's nobody else in the entire country who has the name "Lena Kochman"; someone is pranking me and I have to get the bill so that I can cancel the subscription."
She finally gave me the envelope and said "Well, you can go to jail for taking someone else's mail."
I said "That's fine, because then nobody will be able to send me this s--- anymore."
I shouldn't have sworn or raised my voice. However, it is not unusual that many of the people who work in overnight homeless shelters are deliberately unhelpful to guests, degrade them, waste their time, yell at them and are generally difficult to deal with for no reason. All of that happens while the guest has to remain respectful to the abusive staffperson or staffpeople at all times. The other staffpeople at the front desk while I was trying to get the mail were the older, male staffperson who coughed at me yesterday (and today) and another female staffperson who interjected "She's in charge of the mail" about the staffperson who was refusing to check for the rest of the prank mail.
The lottery for the beds has started. Sometimes, the lottery goes until 5:00 p.m., which is when dinner starts. I won't be able to start calling the places from which the prank mail was sent until after my name is called or until the end of the lottery if my name is called, because guests are supposed to be quiet while the lottery numbers are being called over the loudspeaker. If I get a bed and then have an hour before dinner, I don't want to spend one of these few hours before summer ends calling places about prank mail.
Copyright L. Kochman, September 17, 2015 @ 3:36 p.m.
