Ask Not What Your Package Can Do For You — Ask What You Can Do For Your Package
In my headphones: Billy Idol—Rebel Yell (1983)
The small Berlin paraphernalia store in the Nikolaiviertel that moonlights as a parcel collector for the shipping company Hermes was small, but not cramped. I could not be blamed for finding its name, Gallerie Silk&Embroidery Vietnamesische Stickkunst, misleading, as the store does not offer silks nor embroidery so much as “I Heart Berlin” key fobs and mass-produced textiles. Ever the dutiful daughter, I made my way into the store on Monday to pick up a package for my mother, German passport and electronic authorization slip at the ready.
What followed would be a basic Berliner exercise in patience. A common maxim for newcomers is that they should get used to being yelled at on the street. It’s true, I’ve been berated in concert halls, cafés, museums, palaces, spas, pool halls, bars and churches. But the verbal lashing I received in the mailroom was the worst, or at least the most excruciating yet.
A few minutes elapsed in the near-empty “silk and embroidery” shop before a small man met me by the package counter. “I have a package to collect for my mother,” I said. He said something in German, but when it was clear I didn’t understand, he pointed at a stack of paper authorization forms, a power of attorney document of sorts. I pulled up an identical one on my phone that my mother had emailed me and zoomed in on her signature.
“Nein. Nein!” he said, growing increasingly agitated. “Deine Mutter muss das für dich austfüllen.” Your mother needs to fill this out for you.
“Yes, I know! My mother filled this out in the USA. She ordered her package to my apartment in Berlin and I am supposed to pick it up here.”
“Keine USA!” he said. No USA! “Deine Mutter”—these two words contained a remarkable smugness for just eleven letters—“muss das Paket selbst abholen oder dieses Formular asfüllen.” Your mother needs to pick up the package herself or she needs to fill out this form. To prove his point, he picked up the entire stack of forms and began waving it in front of my face.
“But I have it online!” I cried.
“Dann kann ich dir nicht helfen,” he said, with finality. Then I cannot help you.
He folded his arms and pasted a satisfied smile on his face, shaking his head slowly as he handed me a form, presumably for my mother.
Positively dripping with exasperation, I was all set to return the next morning with my mother’s printed original in tow when I devised a new plan. I’d make use of the crumpled form he handed me by filling it out. But only after editing the article on forensic linguistics I was assigned for work. I made plans to return to the Vietnamese embroidery shop before it closed at six.
~
After fact-checking how forensic linguists identify patterns in words and syntax to trace forged documents and written threats, I copied down my mother’s form on a coffee shop's wooden table, my handwriting rendered wobbly by the uneven surface. I figured the childish nature of each character would absolve me in the event of investigation. At five o’clock, the coffeeshop closed, so I marched back across the street to confront the shopkeeper, having ostensibly returned “home,” where “my mother”—whom we both understood to be in the USA!—had filled out the form in the interim.
To my pleasant surprise, a small woman with smile lines around her eyes met me at the door. “Hallo!” I exclaimed, innocently enough. Fortunately, her answering smile was warm enough to indicate that her partner hadn’t tattletaled on me.
Taking this as a good sign, I tried again. “I have a package to collect fur meine Mutter.” She came back with the package, which was slightly larger than a shoe-box. Encouraged by her warmth and apparent willingness to turn over the parcel, I continued, “Ich habe das Formular von ihr.” I have the form from her. I handed her my black-inked piece of forensic linguistic genius. And then she pulled out the crumpled white sheet that would damn me.
It was the list of packing slips, and the package I needed fell under the name of the woman whose apartment I’m staying in. My mother hadn’t written her own name as the recipient but had instead inserted her first name in parenthesis as though it were my landlady’s middle name.
I could do nothing but observe my own helplessness as the woman at the counter grew increasingly confused. She finally shook her head at me. I was utterly at her mercy. “No match,” she boomed. With that, she handed down the verdict.
I weighed my options. I could pretend my mother’s full name included the last name of the apartment-owning family, or I could explain the situation in full. Since the latter option had not worked so well the last time, I went with the first.
“No say here,” the woman said, indicating that the last name written on her manifest of packing slips did not match the authorization sheet.
Since the man hadn’t particularly seemed to care about retracted lies and chains of logic, I hoped the woman wouldn’t either as I changed my tune entirely. “The name on your sheet is that of the lady whose apartment we’re staying in,” I read from my phone, having dictated the English to a German translation service online. “My mother’s name is in the middle here. She did that to indicate the package is for her” (why she’d decided to put her name smack in the middle of my landlady’s, I do not pretend to know).
The woman looked more confused than ever. I looked down at my phone and realized I had read, “that of the elephant’s sleeve whose apartment we’re staying in.” We shared a brief moment of comedic union as I fixed the sentence, but the humor was fleeting.
“No,” she said, albeit apologetically. “Ich braucse den richtigen Name.” I need the right name. “Die Dame der Wohnung muss das Formular asufüllen.” The lady of the apartment must fill out the form. And I was handed a form yet again.
Understanding the futility of argument this time, I dejectedly began walking home. But when I spotted a few stray tables, a new plan began to take shape. I would get this package before closing time, absent landlord or no.
I filled out the form again, in cursive this time and with my pink pen instead of the black to indicate a distinct authorship, in the courtyard behind the store. Though my apartment was blocks away, the corner store-nature of the “paketshops” ensured the plausible explanation that I had headed home and asked the lady of the house to complete the form. My liar’s urge thus satisfied, I circled the block once more before reentering for round three of hostage negotiations.
The man from earlier did not share my sense of urgency. Indicating he was in the middle of something, he grunted at me to wait. Figuring the shopkeepers might be nicer to me if I was a purchasing customer instead of a package-retrieving squatter upon the territory of their delightfully derivative store, I loudly admired their Berlin bear keychains and glass TV Tower paper weights for what seemed to me like an inordinate amount of time before the enemy shopkeeper motioned for me at the counter. Happily (so happily!), he called toward the back to get the woman to help me, instead.
“Hallo,” I said, with finality this time. “Ich habe das Formular hier,” I said, and slid the form across the counter.
“Wir akzeptieren keinen Rotstift,” she said, calling her partner over to investigate. Though I did not comprehend their meaning at first, I quickly began to understand as the man began to scribble on an unused packing slip with a red pen before pointedly crossing out his work with a black pen.
So they didn’t accept forms written in red pen. From the way they looked at me, I thought they were in on the joke too until they conferred and the man declared, “Wir akzeptieren. Aber normalerweise, nein.” We accept. But usually, no. I didn’t have it in me to be relieved as the man returned to the back of the store.
“ID?” the woman queried.
I rummaged through my bag for my German passport and handed it to her. The woman bobbed her head in a triangular motion, oscillating between my passport, her list of packing slips, and my face. She called her partner over—again. “Das ist Ihr Reisepass?” he asked me. This is your passport? “Yes,” I said. It was.
They conferred over it, looking between me and my passport for quite some time. Finally the woman came out with it: “Du hast einen deutschen Reisepass, aber sprichst kein Deutsch.” I knew enough to understand what she had said and would have even laughed had the package not been so near my possession. You have a German passport, but you speak no German, she had accused me.
“Ich verstehe alles,” I said, defensively. I understand all, I had said, before giving up my ego entirely. In a last-ditch effort to appear charming and dumb, I over-divulged personal information in broken German, telling her I was half-German but neither of my parents spoke German at home even though my father was from Munich and my mother spoke German fluently.
I left it up to her to decide whether I planned to learn as she crossed the packing slip label off the list. In exchange for my package, she wrote down my passport number. But at least I had my package. When I arrived home, I put the box on the bench with the packing label facing downwards, and I haven’t righted it since.