I love Fedex. Last week my sister threw away my contact lenses, condemning me to several days of wearing my glasses. With my birthday party coming up on Thursday, I picked up the phone Tuesday afternoon to call the nice people at Coastal Contacts and place a next day delivery with them. The lenses themselves were on backorder so they didn’t ship until Wednesday, which theoretically, would put them in my hands, or, eyes, as it were, the day of the party. Perfect. As usual, I had no class on Thursday and so would be available all day to get the package.
I woke up Thursday morning and went downstairs to post my usual note to the delivery person, only to find that they had already been there. As much as I *wanted* to stay home and write my midterm paper, the lenses were important, so I called FEDEX to schedule a pickup time, figuring that a $20 cab ride to Maspeth would be worth it.
I was greeted, par usuale, by an automated voice. However this one was much nicer than the UPS system, asking me first what I wanted to do, rather than demanding my tracking number right away. This made me feel good. I only had to get through one level of options before I was permitted to express my intentions to schedule a pick up time. I was then immediately transferred to a live person, and without any of the UPS operator guilt. (In their system, when you press zero you are told, rather rudely, that the fake woman “will transfer you to a representative” but warns you that “this IS the latest tracking information for your package”. Like she’s telling me that she’s given me all the information I need and I couldn’t possibly require or expect anything more from talking to a live person. Bitch.)
So I talked to the real person and was informed that they could actually attempt to redeliver the package later that afternoon, as their driver would still be in the neighborhood. Great! I informed the man I was speaking to that I didn’t have a buzzer and asked if I could get a phone call when the delivery person arrived. He said this wasn’t possible but that someone could call me back in a few minutes and tell me what time I could expect the delivery person to get there. Within the hour, I was called back and told that the package would arrive at 4:30.
Just to be cheeky, and to ensure that I wasn’t *too engrossed in my wonderful midterm paper* to notice the time, I wrote up a quick Apple Script to play “Please Mr. Postman”, The Beatles’ version, at 4:20. But it never had a chance to go off. At 10 to 4:00 I got another phone call from FEDEX telling me the delivery man was downstairs.
It pains me to watch this video again, and to recall the hours, nay, days, of boredom and frustration while I waited for my bed to arrive via UPS. Here is the third episode of my drama.
Leave a Reply