Way back on June 9th I ordered a fancy new umbrella. The vendor created a shipping label that very day, and sent me a tracking number. For reasons (perhaps among them, as they claim on their website, precautions in the warehouse against COVID-19), it was six days before they actually handed the package over to the shipper.
As soon as I’d ordered it, I looked ahead at the weather forecast, wondering if there’d be some rain to use it in, but it looked like a full week of dry weather. Of course, after it took a week to actually ship the package, things had changed. Happily, the package was on-track to arrive Saturday—I’d have my new brolly in hand just hours ahead of forecast thunderstorms!
But then the package followed a mysterious path on it’s way from Wisconsin to Illinois:
- Jun 9 2020 Shipment information received
- Jun 15 2020 Shipment tendered to UPS MI BELLEVILLE, WI
- Jun 15 2020 Package received for processing Avenel, NJ
- Jun 16 2020 Package processed by UPS MI Avenel, NJ
- Jun 17 2020 Package transferred to dest MI facility Avenel, NJ
- Jun 19 2020 Package received by dest MI facility Kansas City, MO
- Jun 20 2020 Package enroute to USPS for induction Kansas City, MO
- 20 Jun 2020 22:29 Shipment Acceptance at PO Hazelwood, MO
In what way is this a sensible?
I mean, I’m willing to cut the vendor some slack for taking six days between sending shipment information and then actually tendering the package. I’m sure precautions against COVID-19 reduce their efficiency in shipping things out of their warehouse. But sending the package from Wisconsin to Illinois via New Jersey and then Missouri? They spent 5 days getting the package to a different adjacent state, to a city only 72 miles closer than where it started!
Now that the package is in the hands of the post office, I figure it will actually get here in a couple of days, just about the time the wet weather ends and it gets sunny and dry for a few days.