by Curmie

Jack’s posts about his experiences at local CVS, 7-11 and McDonald’s outlets have emboldened me to discuss my own recent dealings with respect to a couple of recent purchases.  I’ve experienced two separate incidents over the past few days.  What they share is not simply that someone failed to provide a service they were obligated to provide, but that they lied about it and showed literally no remorse for having done so.

So… here’s incident #1; more next time.

Although I’m retired from teaching, my university has a provision that <i>emeritus</i> faculty are entitled to an office if one is available, and one is.  Because I’m still doing some academic writing, I’m grateful for the workspace, the use of a computer, access to a printer and scanner, etc.  We’re now back in the building we occupied from the time I came here until the summer of 2020, when we were displaced to across campus while renovations and expansions were happening to our “home.”  (We were told we had to move out by the end of May 2020 or we couldn’t move back in the fall of 2021; we couldn’t move in at all until August of this year, and the building won’t really be ready for at least another few months.  But that’s a rant for another day.)

The problems are two-fold.  First, my new office is less than half as big as the one I moved out of three years ago.  Second, it was designed by an idiot, or, more likely, a committee of idiots.  The desk, made of cheap but heavy material, is far too big for an office of that size.  There are permanently mounted cabinets above the desk, but no place for files.  I could go on.  The biggest annoyance is that the offices on my side of the hallway (the smaller ones, with windows offering a view of the convenience store across the street) got only a single bookcase.  I seriously doubt that whoever decided that has ever as much as met a faculty member in the humanities, let alone listened to one.

I was able to get a second bookcase, but they’re absurdly deep, so you can’t put a third one against the remaining space on the only available wall or you could never get past it to sit at that enormous L-shaped desk.  Despite donating over 1000 books to the new department library and taking a dozen boxes home since moving out of my former office, I still have far too many books to fit on the available shelves.  I’ll no doubt need to do another purge when I <i>retire</i> retire, but most of what remains are things I anticipate using in upcoming research projects, and many of these volumes aren’t in the university library.

The solution, obviously, was to buy another bookcase (the university sure as hell wouldn’t provide one) that will fit the available space.  So I did.  I found something on Amazon that met my purposes.  It would have been perfect instead of merely good if those stupid cabinets didn’t extend an inch or so past the desk, and I can’t move the desk (even if I had the strength) and still be able to open the door.  The new bookcase won’t solve the problem, but it will help.

It was to be delivered Friday the 1st.  At 10:37 that morning I got a message from Amazon that the USPS had tried unsuccessfully to deliver it.  This, of course, was a lie; they never bothered.  I was less than pleased.  Anyway, I found the tracking number and did a little investigating.  According to that information, the package was loaded onto a truck and was “out for delivery” at 6:20 a.m., but it wasn’t delivered because—get this—my mailbox was full!  This was both a lie and, of course, irrelevant even it were true.  Bookcases, even those requiring assembly, tend not to fit into mailboxes.

So I called the USPS 800 number, and had a charming conversation with the robot voice.  Now, it became clear that the reason for non-delivery could have been that the package was “large.” Well, duh.  I was told I could pick up the package from the post office starting Saturday, or arrange to have it delivered that day.  I chose the latter, but, needless to say, the package didn’t show up on Saturday.

I’ll grant them Sunday and Monday (Labor Day).  Nothing Tuesday, either, of course, and the tracking now said the bookcase was being held at the post office.  (All the previous stuff about being loaded for delivery had conveniently vanished.)  In other words, it had been sitting in the back room there since Friday, and if they’d told me the truth I could have picked it up then and had the weekend to assemble it without disturbing my colleagues.  But apparently honesty is in short supply at the USPS.

So I went to the post office on Tuesday.  I asked why the tracking said it had been “out for delivery” early Friday morning but wasn’t delivered.  I was told that “No one was here that early.”  Then something about the timestamp being linked to when it got scanned in.  I decided not to bother to ask the obvious question of who scanned it in if there was no one there. 

Anyway, the woman who waited on me went into the back room and then re-appeared carrying the package.  It had “heavy” stickers on it in three or four places, but she managed it just fine.  In its unassembled state, the bookcase is about the size of a carry-on bag and weighs maybe 45 or 50 pounds.  I had no trouble getting it to my car or loading it into my trunk.  (I confess that I asked our tech director to borrow a hand truck to get it to my office since I couldn’t park anywhere near the elevator; he chose to carry it, instead.  This involved a trek of 50 yards or so and a set of stairs.)

OK, it’s hardly news that the USPS will avoid work whenever possible, and certainly the utterly false statements about “out for delivery” and the reason for non-delivery are all too typical.  But, as they say on the late-night infomercials, wait!  There’s more!  Presumably they knew when they got the package from Amazon that they weren’t actually going to deliver it… or maybe it’s just the locals who decided that.  Either way, the USPS got paid to deliver the bookcase to me and failed to do so.

The only question is whether Amazon is responsible at all.  Other couriers are perfectly willing to deliver “heavy” packages (see Part II of this doubleheader).  Why would Amazon choose the USPS?  Surely they’ve been around the block enough times to know that the postal service isn’t necessarily going to treat their (Amazon’s) customers right. 

Still, it’s easier to forgive a less than inspired business decision than outright prevarication.  But, alas, there’s not a lot an online customer can do to avoid the mendacious organization.  And it doesn’t help that it’s a government agency.

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