Rant

Imagine that you order several videos from a respectable online store. One of these videos is something that would be great in place of a lecture you have to give on a topic you are not very familiar with. Because time is running short, you spend the extra $20+ for next day UPS shipping. This would mean the videos would arrive with plenty of time for you to review them before showing them to your class.

You placed your order on a Thursday, but it was kind of late and UPS doesn't deliver next days on the weekend, so you figure the video should arrive on Monday. Monday comes and goes with no package. Hmmm... you need this for Thursday, so you are annoyed, but you wait. Tuesday comes and goes with no package. By this point you are fuming, you notice the email sent from respectable store includes a UPS tracking number. You look up the tracking number and holy crap it is listed as having been delivered on Friday!

You ask the other individual who lives with you if he accidently brought it in and never told you (unlikely, but you ask anyway). Nope. Other individual very kindly volunteers to ask the neighbors who live in the front apartments if they accidently picked it up. Nope. So you get on the phone to UPS. "Oh, that's too bad, but we can't do anything for you. The shipper needs to contact us so we can investigate." Commence yelling and screaming.

Now you call respectable store, they are sympathetic despite your nasty behavior, and promise to contact UPS asap. But they tell you it will likely take 2 weeks to find out anything and at that point UPS will email you. Commence more yelling and screaming because now you don't have your package, you've spent a lot of extra money, and you have to write a lecture on a topic you hate.

Two weeks pass and no information about the package arrives. You call UPS again and are prepared to be mean and angry, but that is diffused by a very nice woman on the phone. She notes that in the computer there is an investigation regarding the package started on 11/16 (nearly 2 weeks after your first call) and that delivery of this package was attempted again on 11/17 at 5pm, but no one was home. Which is ludicrious because you were home! Woman on the phone is puzzled that delivery was not re-attempted on the 18th or 20th. She takes down new information from you including specific instructions about where your apartment is exactly located. She promises to send the message to the driver and that the driver will call back within an hour to discuss the situation and arrange delivery.

Oh, but this is too good to be true. The niceness of this woman caused you to drop your guard. An hour goes by and there's no call. Two hours, three hours, and more go by with no call and no delivery. Now you are furious again. You call UPS today and yell at their ineffectual automated system. When you finally get a live person on the phone, she says that a message was sent out and that it was replied to as received even though no one called you back. She claims that there is an ongoing investigation that will take another 8 days to finish. You say, you talked to someone last night you said they had the package and were supposed to call you. She says she'll put an urgent message through to the package center to call you within an hour.

And so now you wait again filled with paranoia that the other packages you recently ordered will also disappear into the UPS void as they laugh at their good fortune to steal what you paid for.

Phone rings! Nooo it is evil wedding related people. You get off the phone quickly and return to waiting...