Tinotopia

On Sunday night, I ordered some shoes from Zappos. I spent enough that I got free overnight shipping, which would ordinarily have meant that they would get here on Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, we had a snowstorm, and UPS didn’t deliver it:

– though even at 1:49 p.m., when they gave up on it, the roads weren’t very bad.

Today, they didn’t even attempt a delivery:

I can’t say I entirely blame them. The road to the house is fine, but the driveway is so bad that I can’t even get up it with four wheel drive.

This isn’t a big problem, though, really, because the UPS depot is about four miles from here, and I drive past it when I go anywhere. I checked the UPS website and found that I could pick up Air packages until 7:00 p.m.:

And I went down there.

You know the punchline, of course? Right. You can’t pick up Air packages until 7:00: they ‘pick up’ Air packages from there at 7 p.m. From a customer’s perspective, they really mean ‘drop off’, as in ‘you can drop off Air packages until 7 p.m.’

The hours are defined from their perspective, which I suppose I shouldn’t find all that surprising given the rest of the way they relate to their customers.

But the real punchline is that Nicole bought a pair of shoes from a private seller on eBay within minutes of me placing my Zappos order. That package arrived today, from Los Angeles, via Priority Mail. Little Guy: 1, Big Company With UPS Contract: 0