One of my websites is a little eCommerce shop where I sell products and then post them off. This means I have parcels to send by registered delivery on an almost daily basis to (usually) the UK and Ireland.
90% of these orders are to England so I didn’t mind too much when the woman at the counter at the local post office would add “ANGLIA” to the end of the address (apparently “United Kingdom” isn’t enough). I started to do the same to save time at the post office, putting “SZKOCJA” or “WALIA” where appropriate. One day I had a parcel for Northern Ireland and so had written “United Kingdom, PÓŁNOCNA IRLANDIA”) on the address. I was quite suprised when she told me I had to put “Anglia” on it. What followed was an extremely strange 5 minutes of argument because I refused to do so, telling her that Northern Ireland is not in England. She insisted that only “Anglia” was a recognised country and it had to be “Anglia”. I asked her if she thought that Scotland or Wales were in Anglia too, at which point some of the increasingly frustrated people queuing up behind me started to join in the argument too.
The situation was resolved by her calling her manager, who reluctantly agreed that we could leave the envelope as it was, but they weren’t convinced that it would get to it’s destination OK. I said I would take the chance.
When I got back home I was so annoyed I wrote a sarcastic email to the Polish postal service (Poczta Polska) asking them if they knew the difference between England, the UK and Great Britain or if they only had problems with European geography in my local branch.
I was suprised to get a letter out of the blue 2 months later stating that they had held an investigation, given the employees some training, and that according to their code of practice the country must be either Northern Ireland (PÓŁNOCNA IRLANDIA) or Great Britain (WIELKA BRYTANIA). As a nice little twist that made me smile, the letter also said that the woman serving me had tried to tell me that it must be “Wielka Brytania” but that I was rude to her. Err, no love. So she seems to have not only a problem with geography but memory problems too….