Watch What You Say about My Package
As previously documented, I had to ship my defective hard drive back to the vendor. As part of my lunch yesterday, I visited a local shipping emporium. Employee A handed me a small box, eight inches on all sides, which was plenty large for the intended cargo. I taped it up with the provided packing tape and filler, completed the form, and returned to the counter.
By that point, another customer had entered. He got to the counter just before I did with his monstrosity. It was a bass guitar in a hard case. He may have started with a single cardboard box around the hard case, but he'd chopped it down some and bound the whole thing up with a combination of twine and duct tape. As he cut me off, he looked at my little cube and quipped "you call that a package?"
As Employee A entered my shipment into the computer, Employee B explained that the beast was not eligible to be shipped due to the use of duct tape. All of the duct tape would have to be replaced with or covered by packing tape. He protested that he'd shipped with duct tape many times in the past, and replacing the duct tape would take him "three days". She wouldn't budge. What, he wanted to know, was different about duct tape that would make it unsuitable? As a fan of Not Always Right, a notorious know-it-all, and the object of his scorn, I chimed in "probably the adhesive." He left in disgust.
On her way back to the office, Employee B turned to me and said "thank you!"
"Did you hear what he said to me before you started helping him?"
"No."
"He said 'you call that a package?' Now I can tell him 'yes, yes I do, because they'll ship it!'"
By that point, another customer had entered. He got to the counter just before I did with his monstrosity. It was a bass guitar in a hard case. He may have started with a single cardboard box around the hard case, but he'd chopped it down some and bound the whole thing up with a combination of twine and duct tape. As he cut me off, he looked at my little cube and quipped "you call that a package?"
As Employee A entered my shipment into the computer, Employee B explained that the beast was not eligible to be shipped due to the use of duct tape. All of the duct tape would have to be replaced with or covered by packing tape. He protested that he'd shipped with duct tape many times in the past, and replacing the duct tape would take him "three days". She wouldn't budge. What, he wanted to know, was different about duct tape that would make it unsuitable? As a fan of Not Always Right, a notorious know-it-all, and the object of his scorn, I chimed in "probably the adhesive." He left in disgust.
On her way back to the office, Employee B turned to me and said "thank you!"
"Did you hear what he said to me before you started helping him?"
"No."
"He said 'you call that a package?' Now I can tell him 'yes, yes I do, because they'll ship it!'"