You’ve seen the message, a text or an email announcing that your package is “Out for Delivery.” I recently saw that notice four times for a package that never arrived. When I called customer service, Steve in Hyderabad (I suspect that Steve is not his real name) told me those messages are generated when a package is actually scanned onto the truck that delivers to our route.
I have a theory about what happened. It’s pure conjecture, but my theory is based on conversations with helpful people in some of the biggest cities in Asia. My package’s journey began when the box was loaded at the back of a truck because we live near the end of our delivery route. When our driver didn’t finish the route that day, it stayed at the back of the truck and got scanned again the next day that he didn’t finish his route. After several days at the back of the truck, my package was damaged and undeliverable, which is why the things I ordered from Walmart in Clayton, Ga., went to Uvalde, Texas.
In case you were wondering, we’re not talking about UPS. UPS has always been reliable. Our packages come right to the front door and usually on time. If it’s raining, the package will be wrapped in plastic. When it snowed last winter and our driver couldn’t get the delivery truck up the driveway, he walked the package in. He never appears to be in a hurry, but he always finishes his route.
We’re not talking about the USPS either. Our mail carrier has the same excellent work ethic as the UPS guy. If the parcel is too big to fit inside the mailbox, he brings it to the front door. When the tracking information tells me our package has arrived at the post office, we can be confident that it will be delivered the same day.
It’s not Amazon. Our young driver in her 2WD sedan has never failed to deliver on the same day she received our packages. During the recent snowstorm, her little car managed to make it all the way out here to the boondocks and up our driveway while another delivery service which shall remain nameless was taking the day off.
The name of the company in question must remain a mystery. We do not wish to embarrass anyone or make them feel unsafe, so we would never single out the $58 billion company that hires the mysterious, unknowable, and unreachable local contractors who send out the dented white trucks, contractors who are insulated from complaints by a website and automated phone systems that take you on a journey around the world that often mimics the journey of the undeliverable item in the box you never receive.
Much of the reliability of any delivery service depends on the luck of the draw. For several years the mystery company provided us a driver who was so reliable he was promoted to a better route closer to home. We were happy for him and sad to see him go. After he left our route, we got a guy who tossed our packages onto the ground below the mailbox, about 250 feet from the house. Then we had the dude who thought “front door” meant “the patch of poison ivy on the ground by the barn.” After that, we enjoyed a brief relationship with a guy who generated “attempted delivery” messages on days we were home, and then the guy who quit in the middle of his route, emptied his truck onto the ground, and left for parts unknown.
Sometimes you get the guy whose biggest qualification is that he shows up for work, like our current white-truck driver. We’ll just call him “Nub.” Nub is friendly, and he likes music, which we can hear from about a quarter mile away. The dogs hear it much sooner. It’s better than a driveway alarm. Nub is never in a hurry, but unlike our UPS driver, he frequently runs late. He once generated an “attempted delivery” notice for a bag of cat food. Perhaps he forgot that you don’t have to sign for a bag of cat food, and since we were home all day during his attempted delivery, maybe he forgot where we lived.
We suspect that Nub’s short-term memory may be impaired. We have reminded him several times that the front door to our house is not 100 feet away at the corner of the shop in the puddle, but he has yet to remember that. He forgets that the arrows on the box above the “this side up” labels are there to remind him that the top of the box doesn’t go on the ground. He forgets to wrap the box in plastic when it’s raining. He forgets that if he walked a few more steps he could save the plastic bag he forgot to bring by putting our package on the front porch, by the front door, as per the delivery instructions he forgot to read.
Sometimes it’s not Nub’s fault when packages are late or undeliverable. I think he has cousins working at the big box stores where we buy supplies and, at the mysterious company’s distribution center in Ellenwood, Georgia. To ensure your package never arrives, follow this simple procedure: order a liquid in a glass bottle, like cooking oil or vinegar, from Walmart or Sam’s Club. Then order something in a can. Nub’s cousin will drop your items into a box that’s too large for the shipment and add some brown paper to muffle the sound of metal hitting glass during transit.
The contents of the box might survive the first toss onto the truck from the store to the distribution hub. They might survive the toss from that truck to the warehouse floor, but with each successive toss, the chances of a successful delivery diminish rapidly. By the time your box makes it to hub Nub, the olive oil is leaking onto the floor and a “delivery exception” has occurred.
Sometimes Nub is the price you pay for living in a remote area. For us, buying online continues to be at least as cheap as buying in person, and when you add travel time and costs, it’s cheaper to recycle cardboard than to make a 50-mile round trip to buy non-perishables. If your business requires electronic components or you need a proprietary whatzit to repair your gizmo, online is pretty much the only option. We all pay the price for the demise of brick-and-mortar stores that once provided the variety of goods now available only from dented white trucks delivering from distribution hubs. At least shipping is free…
Outside The Box 