French Post Office

This morning, coming back from the Hypermarket, I had to post a package and stopped by one of La Poste facilities there are in the neighborhood.

I'm not the kind of person that queue for this kind of purpose so I went to the automatic machine, waited for 2 minutes and when the guy just before me left with a strange face, I understood why... the machine had suddenly decided to stop working, what a chance! I looked at the people queuing - waiting for 15min just to stick a postage stamp - and I thought "not today". The woman behind me who also wanted to use machine, also decided that it was not the day.

Now, I'm asking:

* why on earth, when there are so many people waiting, don't they open other desks? Especially when there only 2 or 3 opened, and one is for special operations.

* what are all the employees occupied with? why don't they hire people and everybody is happy?

* is it the same thing abroad?

P.S. no no, French people do not always moan... indeed, that's not a French touch, that's just mine!