I work in mail sorting. While tech support is in no way in my job description, we do stuff with computers, and I like to help with what I can to keep the process flowing. Thus, people know to ask me first.

These are problems I’ve solved in the last couple of months alone.

1. “The packet slip printer is not working.” We have a recurring problem of printers malfunctioning, but there are a couple that I trust, so I assumed it was just out of paper or something. Nope, the problem was that the display of the slip printing computer station was turned off. The printer was working just fine.
2. “The tracker system location number field doesn’t accept any input.” It’s one of those fields that accepts only a certain amount of characters. When I went in, I saw that the cursor was suspiciously far in the field. I cleared the spaces and moved the packet whose corner was resting on the space bar.

Then, of course, there was trying to guide people through the use of tabs and rescuing them from accidentally making their browsers fullscreen.

I order some small items online — a magnet and a sticker — with home delivery through our national postal service, assuming they’ll just drop it through the mail slot in my door if I’m not home.

After I’ve forgotten about the whole thing, I arrive home one evening to find a notification that a package that has arrived and is waiting for me to pick it up. The notification says the package is being held until… that very same day. It also has some helpful instructions on how to pay for them to hold it even longer. Well, all right, then.

Since I cannot time travel, and at the moment I am so irked that I refuse to pay, the package gets sent back. The next day, I contact their customer service.

The representative helpfully informs me that yes, sometimes the notifications get sent late. I question this, and they claim that they have no control over when the post gets sent out. Maybe I’m uneducated, but I can’t understand how the postal service does not have control over this. The way I figure it is, they receive a package, they check the next time they send out the post, and they then keep the package until maybe two or three days after the notification gets sent out.

I end up writing a complaint, to which I get a very generic answer. You know, the “Sorry about your experience” one? I reply again outlining just what the problem is, but I don’t hear anything about it for a while.

About a month later, I get another reply — this time from someone who actually recognizes the problem and apologizes for what happened. They also tell me they have put the package back to be picked up. The last pick-up date? Two weeks ago. Well, that would have been nice to know a month ago when they first replied.

During this time, the seller contacts me about the returned package and agrees to send it again when I explain the situation to them.

Today, just around two weeks later, I finally got the package. And yes, they put it through the mail slot. I haven’t gotten a reply from the postal service yet, and I probably will never know why they didn’t just drop it through the mail slot the first time.

Buckle up for my tale of woe. Dates are provided for your amusement and my own belated aggravation.

I bought a pair of small items from an eBay vendor on August 17. I was told that they would be packaged together and shipped out to me via regular USPS (United States Postal Service), which meant that the package would arrive by regular Canada Post, typically getting to me within two weeks.

This is nothing that I haven’t done before. Sometimes, such parcels get redirected to the post office, and I have to suffer the minor inconvenience of walking down there to show my ID and pick it up from there.

Oh, if only.

I got a notification via the eBay mobile app that my package was going to be delivered at about 9:00 am on Sunday, September 3, which was a Sunday on a long “Labour Day” weekend. Of course, I was immediately confused, as Canada Post only delivers on weekdays, but I obligingly let my landlord know that I was expecting a delivery.

You see, I live directly across the street from one of our city’s busiest, most public parks, close to our downtown. Given the economic downturn, there have been a lot of package thefts, so the landlord insists on a few simple security measures. The primary measure is that the front door to the apartment building remains locked except to allow deliveries (such as the daily mail or a scheduled package).

Naturally, this was where things failed. The actual delivery attempt did not occur until after 5:00 pm. Not only was I out doing my own weekly errands, but nobody else was home to call, and over the course of the day, one of the other tenants must have locked the front door behind them. The delivery driver called me on my cell phone but frustratingly hung up on me before I could arrange a second delivery attempt after the long weekend.

And I soon got my first email notification from a Canadian delivery company that they had attempted but failed to deliver my package.

Two days later, on September 5, I got a new notification from [Delivery Company] that my package was now available for pick-up… in another city about 50 km away, or forty-five minutes in good non-rush-hour highway traffic. This was painful, as I choose to live a blissful pedestrian life — an “I couldn’t car less, because I don’t have a car in the world” kind of life.

There was a brief interlude when, on Wednesday, September 6, I received my package via regular Canada Post mail. Or… half of my package. One of the two items, which had purportedly been shipped together as a single unit, was safe in my mailbox.

The only friend I had with a car who was willing to drive that far as a favour to me not only works every other weekend, but they are still in the newly “wedded bliss” stage, and I am loathe to unnecessarily take time away from the happy couple, especially on the rare weekends when they are both off together. And [Delivery Company] has very weird hours for pickup availability: Monday to Friday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm and Sunday from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm. As I work weekdays until 5:00 pm, Sunday it is, if at all.

But Sundays weren’t working out to make the trip; the timing never matched up. I’d been sending messages through [Delivery Company]’s online support since September 5, but they were very good at replying. I played their game well enough, allowing for their purported “twenty-four-to-forty-eight-hour” response time, and generally on the third day, I would send a new message. They did respond to my second message, asking me to provide the information they already had: my name, address, email, phone number, and tracking number.

I provided their requested information immediately and waited for their response. And over the next few weeks, I re-provided that information another four times. Out of desperation, on September 26, I randomly searched the iPhone AppStore for their name and found that they had an app — one that they surely could have told me about at any time in the preceding three weeks.

So, after a tremendously long delay, I installed an otherwise useless app onto my phone. It allowed me to register with just my cell phone number and a confirmation PIN sent via text, so I entered their tracking number. Yup, the status showed that it was waiting for pick-up. I was finally able to manually reschedule a new delivery, and rather than risk another fiasco, I was also able to change the shipping address to my work address. But my ability to add delivery notes was very curtailed; I could not add any of my own text and was literally only able to tell it that they could only deliver during regular business hours, i.e., nine to five. I was not able to also add that my office is only open Monday through Friday.

The delivery was, as of September 27, now expected within “seven business days” which, by definition, are only Monday through Friday and not weekends, so that worked out to a potential delivery date of October 9, an entire month after the other half of my purchase had already arrived safely.

In a bit of irony, now that I’d managed to reschedule that delivery, somebody at the company finally started to respond to some of my previous attempts to contact support. They’d definitely missed that forty-eight-hour turnaround, though. And the only thing they could tell me — after initially telling me they didn’t have my package yet?! — was that a new delivery attempt was being scheduled within seven business days.

Then, on September 28, I saw in the app what appeared to be good news! As of 4:00 am, they had flagged my package as “out for delivery”! But alas, that was nothing but false hope, because they neither showed up at my work address as requested nor at home.

It fiiiinally arrived at about 9:30 am on Tuesday, October 3.

What I have since been able to understand, now that this fiasco is finally over and done with, is that many eBay vendors no longer handle their own shipping. They warehouse their items at an eBay facility, and eBay itself then handles all of the actual deliveries. While the two items were nearly identical in shape and size, somebody selected vastly differently shaped and sized boxes for each. And although eBay can indeed combine items to be shipped together, they won’t do so when shipping out of the country, i.e., from the US to Canadian customers. Putting all of that together meant that the smaller box was sent via USPS (and arrived in very good time), but the second very late box ended up with a third-party delivery service that doesn’t even have a shipping hub anywhere close to me.

All would have been a nicely prompt delivery with a total lack of angst on my part, if only they had used USPS.

I live in a small town. One afternoon, I go to the local post office to mail some packages and letters. I’m waiting in line with two people ahead of me and four or five people behind me. There are two clerks on duty.

An angry man is yelling at the female clerk and aggressively gesturing with his smartphone.

Customer: “What do you mean, my package isn’t here?! My phone shows that it was delivered!”

Clerk: *Trying to stay calm* “Sir… whoever sent the package put in the wrong zip code. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

Customer: *Holding up his smartphone* “That’s not what my phone says. It says it was sent to [My Town] just now! Where is it?!”

Clerk: *Looking at her computer* “Sir… I understand, but it’s not here. Look, my system shows that it’s in [Small City about twenty minutes away].”

Customer: “Well, can you call someone?! I need that d*** package!”

Clerk: “There’s no one for me or you to call. It’s in [Small City]. I can’t do anything about this until it arrives in [My Town].”

Customer: *Getting more irate* “What the h*** is your system saying is wrong with the package?”

Clerk: “Sir, I keep telling you… Whoever mailed the package wrote the wrong zip code.”

Customer: “Listen, the zip code for [My Town] is [zip code ending in a six], is it not?!”

Clerk: “Yes, it is, but for whatever reason, it was read as [zip code ending in a zero], so it got sent to the wrong post office.”

Customer: “I don’t understand why you can’t just give me my f****** package!”

Clerk: *Starting to lose it* “Sir, I keep telling you this. I don’t understand what you want me to do. The package is in [Small City]. I can’t just magically change the zip code on a package that I don’t physically have! You’re trying to get me to do something that is literally impossible!”

The argument lasts for about five minutes in total until, eventually, the man gets frustrated and leaves, swearing and muttering under his breath.

After he leaves, the clerk sighs with relief and everyone behind me starts talking about the man’s behavior. The male clerk tries to get the man’s attention, but he’s already out the door.

Coworker: “Sir! Sir! Sir!”

Clerk: “Stop. Let him go. If he wants that parcel so bad, he can drive to [Small City]. They’ll have to deal with him.

Coworker: “Yeah… you’re right. Sorry.”

I eventually walk up to the counter.

Me: “What was his problem?” 

Clerk: “I don’t know what he expected me to do. His package is physically not in this building.”

Me: “You handled that quite professionally.”

Clerk: “Thanks. It’s not the first time that’s happened.”

I handed the clerk my items, paid the postage, and wished her a nice day.

I’m living in a small village in Germany.

We had the same woman bringing packages and the post for decades. Even before I moved in here together with my husband, [Carrier #1] was the one delivering the post.

Everyone knew her, everyone liked her. Yes, she wasn’t perfect. Sometimes, when she had too many packages, she’d take some home — which was totally illegal — and deliver them the next day. If she met anyone on her route, she’d latch onto them and talk up a storm. 

But we liked her. She was careful with the packages and never broke anything, and she knew exactly where everyone was living, so she was quick, too. She’d make sure your packages were left in a safe place where you could actually find them and they wouldn’t get too warm or wet. 

Then, [Carrier #1] retired. Oh, how we missed her after just a few weeks!

Her successor was nothing like her. Finding your packages on your property became an Easter egg hunt. Sometimes, [Carrier #2] would leave them right in front of your door in the most inconvenient way, so they’d block the door or get knocked over. He didn’t care about rain or blaring sun.

Some people have a front building, which is a small, roofed mini-room in front of your main entrance that’s common in Germany. It’s not like a porch, though; it’s really just a tiny roof right over the door or a very small room, often just enough to put your shoes on a rack or let an umbrella dry. Even if you had one of those, [Carrier #2] would ignore that and put the packages somewhere else, hiding them so you’d sometimes not even find them, or putting them right in front of the front building while it was raining.

He also wasn’t very careful. He’d throw the packages around in his car, and almost always the package would be damaged, and sometimes even the contents would be dinged, as well.

But I accidentally trained [Carrier #2] out of his rough handling of packaging, at least.

I ordered a large package with various items. When it was delivered, I happened to be outside in the gardens.

[Carrier #2], who had never introduced himself, drove up the hill to our house and stumbled out of his car. He looked sick. He held onto the car and wobbled to the back. I came closer and immediately knew he had damaged my package. And I also knew he deeply regretted everything that had led to it. He fumbled around in the back of the car and grabbed the package, which was soaked, and turned around, making a movement as if to throw it at the house, just to see me now standing right in front of him.

I grinned and said the magic words:

Me: “I refuse delivery. The package is broken.”

I saw his face fall. You can do that in Germany, and then they have to take it back to the sender; in Germany, the ownership of the package stays with the company sending it until it’s handed to the recipient, and it’s the customer’s right to deny delivery if the package is damaged. It then to be shipped back to the company, and they can make a claim to the delivery service for compensation of the broken package. 

[Carrier #2] had no choice. He had to fill out a damage slip, right in front of me, and take the package back into the car.

He looked quite resentful for having to do so, but there was nothing to be done.

But I knew he wouldn’t dare to risk breaking anything ever again.

Why? The package contained sixty-five flasks of essential oils I had ordered as a gift for my mother-in-law, who liked to put different oils on little sponges and use them as cupboard scents. 

It was a very hot day, and the package was soaked, which means he must have broken several flasks of essential oils. The stink of that had hit me although I stood several metres away. I could smell that the stink inside the warm interior of the car was overwhelming.

I heard later that [Carrier #2] couldn’t finish his tour; he had to drive back to the main distribution centre. I bet he got a stern talking-to.

I was contacted by the company when they got the package back, and I had a new one within a few days. And guess what? It was delivered in perfect condition. Delivery overall improved a lot. 

So, I guess that’s one thing essential oils are actually good for: they cure bad postmen of bad habits.