Monday, October 23, 2006

UPS Bingo

Well, Friday night I experienced something interesting. You know when UPS tries to deliver a package and you aren't home? They leave that little slip that says they attempted delivery and you can call it and tell them to hold the package at their pick-up. Well, we did the Komen Breast Cancer Walk this weekend and the shirts we were supposed to wear were being delivered by UPS. We weren't home when they were attempted delivery so Diana and I had to go to this UPS Delivery Center to get them. This is where the fun starts.

The store is only open from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. When we got there, the line was very long. The doors hadn't opened yet so everyone was waiting. It felt like I was in line for concert tickets. As they opened the doors, I heard a woman yelling, "We will be calling out names and you must verify your address before picking up the package."

We all crammed into the UPS center and this little woman began looking at names on packages and screaming them out. If your name was called, you had to yell "Here" and they put your package in the line to get verified. Keep in mind that this is all done in a half hour.

People kept trickling in as we were standing there. Of course they saw the line for address verification and got into it. When Diana's name got called, she jumped in line and I stood by the door. Every time someone came in I just told them to stand to the side and wait for their name to be called.

This idiot from Best Buy's Geek Squad kept going, "Well this is great" and "What kind of system is this?". I wanted to ask him what his idea would be. Did he really want to be in a line where each person hands their slip over and a UPS person goes looking for the package? I was actually impressed with the inventiveness of the process. It was funny to see people get so excited to hear their name called.

That is all,

Newt

1 Ripples in the pond:

Anonymous said...

Wow - even in Lubbock, the UPS distribution center was open for most of the day - it was always deserted the few times I had to go pick up a package. So, they did the take-a-slip-look-for-a-package thing. I am impressed that, for a half-hour of being open, they had actually thought about a better way of doing things, instead of just doing the same old thing.