Maybe he was being mailed to Abu Dhabi...

[Monterey Jack]

[cookies for ref]

Was at the post office picking up a package this morning, there was this family weighing their seven or eight-year-old kid on the scanning pad for the packages! And the employee at the counter was apparently totally fine with this.

I'm at a loss.

[dalesys]

... weighing their seven or eight-year-old kid ...

Loss insurance for live stock is per pound?

[Monterey Jack]

The kid was sitting there calmly, legs folded under himself lotus-style, so it wasn't like he crawled up there by himself and was fussing around or whatever, but still...who does that? Who puts their kid's ASS on a sensitive platform where people's packages are going to weighed all day? They can't afford a bathroom scale? And why was the employee okay with this (she was calmly talking to the parents for a minute or so after the kid hopped down)? I almost wanted to ask, but I just wanted to pick up my package and go home (plus, there was a woman in line behind me with five or six packages in her arms...she seriously had to crane her neck to the side to see where she was going).

This isn't nearly as bad as people who change their babies' dirty diapers on any available public surface, but still...keep your kid's stinky butt away from where my package is going to be weighed and processed.

[TheSHAD0W]

I think using the post office scale to weigh your child is perfectly Nermal.

[Sliceanddice]

i think for a child's passport you need the child's biometric info like weight.

[Slave to the Phone]

At the front desk, there is a high counter separating us from them. There are LARGE RED signs on the counter telling people to not put their children on the counter. At least 5 times a day, someone will put their child's saggy diapered butt on one of the signs.

I start out the month nicely saying "Please don't put your baby on the counter.", by the end of the month things like "Really? You just put your baby on the sign saying to not do that?" start coming out of my mouth. Can you all tell that I hate working in the lobby?

As to the weight, its easy. Weigh yourself on the bathroom scale. Pick up the cat and weigh yourself again. Subtract your weight and guess what? You have the cat's weight.

[tigger222]

(cookies for ref) Garfield

[LadyofArc]

i think for a child's passport you need the child's biometric info like weight.

Only other thing I can think of is that they figured that the scale at home was inaccurate and wanted to use something that they knew would be calibrated "correctly."

[Rosco the Iroc]

(cookies for ref) Garfield

Close but it was Nermal he was trying to mail

[SpyOne]

I don't own a bathroom scale. I haven't owned one for over 20 years.
It isn't hard for me to imagine someone having kids but no scale, and not having a doctor's appointment soon (Doctors often weigh you).
Many of those package scales are designed to weigh very heavy packages, much heavier than a kid.
And in transit your package will probably be exposed to things far worse than the seat of some kid's pants.


When I was about 19 I bought a used pickup truck, and when I went to register it they wanted to know the Gross Vehicle Weight. This was not something the asked for with cars.
People said it would be on a plate riveted to the body somewhere. There were plates on the door frame and under the hood, but none gave the GVR. Finally I called a scrapyard that I delivered pizzas to and asked if it would be alright if I weighed my truck on their truck scale, and they agreed.
So there was a little bitty 1974 Ford Courier parked on a scale designed to weigh semis.

[Deserted]

When I was about 19 I bought a used pickup truck, and when I went to register it they wanted to know the Gross Vehicle Weight. This was not something the asked for with cars.

I wonder why they wouldn't have something like that listed somewhere. As long as it isn't modified, it's going to weigh the same as other trucks of the same model.

For that matter, when I owned a truck many moons ago, I was never asked. I guess Desert Hell doesn't care... or else they already know what a C-10 weighs.

[Nunavut Pants]

So there was a little bitty 1974 Ford Courier parked on a scale designed to weigh semis.

I know people who have used those scales to weigh race cars. So here is a tiny little thing made out of steel tubes and fiberglass panels, sitting on a semi-trailer scale.

I think one guy even did a front/rear weight check, though I'm less sure on that.

[Buzzard]

With (pickup) trucks, the GVW is used, in part, to determine the fees to soak you with. Registered as a TRUCK, it's something to haul things and (OMG!) make money, so they fee the hell out of it. Now if it gets registered the same as a CAR (yes, it van be done*) the cost is much less. The catch is that a car-registered truck can't have toolboxes and such in the bed.
heh. for extra fun, I know where there's a trio of P&H cranes with 12, 50 and 140 TON capacities, all registered in California, for ~$100 each. Again, they get away with it as they cannot carry any cargo.

[taxguykarl]

(cookies for ref) Garfield

Technically
Garfield and Friends.

[SpyOne]

In the state I lived in when I bought that pickup, there were three kinds of license plates:
the standard plate (aka "passenger plates") for a privately owned vehicle for personal use.
Commercial Plates, for vehicles owned by a business or private vehicles used exclusively for work. These said "COMMERCIAL" where the state motto usually went, and were a different color (red-on-white instead of white-on-blue)
Combination Plates, for privately owned vehicles used partly for work and partly for personal use. Again, said "COMBINATION" right on them, again a different color (blue-on-white).

Pickup trucks could only have those last two kinds, as my father found out to his surprise. He had bought a 1971 Toyota Hilux (in about 1980) because it was simply the cheapest used car at the dealer. The folks at the DMV were unmoved by his pointing out that it would be of no use in his job as a university professor.
Also, he had to stop using his varoite shortcut on his commute, because "no trucks" meant any vehicles with Commercial or Combination plates.