[mrbill]

I moved from Austin to Houston almost ten years ago. Was good friends with my Austin mailman, who lived down the block.

About a month after we moved, I got a package in the mail - a cardboard mailing tube, containing a poster, that I'd bought online a couple of years before but never gotten around to putting up. But how did it end up back in the mail?

It turns out that during one of our move trips, the poster was left leaning against the outside wall on the front porch at the Austin house, next to the mailbox.

Our mailman saw it, assumed that it had been (recently) delivered by another postman on his day off, and he knew that we had a forwarding order in place. So he put the poster back in the system with our Houston address on it (being properly packaged and all) and I got it a few days later.

[Zancarius]

This story goes to show that sometimes the most important "hacking" of any system is to be in good graces with the people running it.

[mrbill]

Or to just be nice to people in general, and eventually good karma will come back to you. I give cold bottled water to the Jehovah's Witnesses that come around every year in the heat of the summer, I make sure and thank and leave cards w/small gifts for my UPS and FedEx regular drivers and postpeople/mailpeople, etc.

Even yelling "Thank you!" through my front window (near my computer desk) when the UPS guy drops-and-runs a package can make a big difference.

Say please and thank you as a matter of habit, to show people in service industries that you appreciate the work they do, that saves time and effort on your part.

[Fuzzwah]

Or to be able to social engineer your way into making them think you're in the good graces.

[TeMPOraL]

Being honestly nice is easier than faking it.