Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

O package, where art thou?

There is indeed a first time for everything.

Like most of you, I’ve been shopping with Amazon for the longest time. I’m old enough to remember when Amazon did not charge sales tax in California. Anyways, throughout this long relationship, the couriers contracted by Amazon have not once lost a package of mine. (Or stolen before I got to it, I guess.) Sadly, that streak ended this past Monday.

I got the standard notification email saying the package was delivered. However, it was nowhere to be found - and I was out the front door almost immediately. I live in a nice neighborhood, so package thievery doesn’t really occur (knock on wood). Couriers typically take a picture to confirm the delivery, but for this instance there was no picture! The only explanation is… well, bottom line is the package is missing.

In such situations, Amazon asks customers to check with neighbors to see if the package got delivered to them by mistake. Hope you’re on friendly terms with your next doors! If that returns unfruitful, the customer is then to wait 48 hours. Because apparently. couriers sometimes will mark a package as delivered, but will actually make the delivery on a different day (USPS has knack for this, according to Reddit). Only after 48 hours should the customer contact Amazon support.

If the courier is third-party (UPS, Fed-ex, DHL, etc), customers can and should contact them about the missing package that was marked delivered. In my case, the courier was Amazon (affiliate, probably), so nothing to do but wait the two days.

To Amazon’s credit, I was able to get a refund after a quick word with support chat. I was surprised at how easy it was, given it was about $160 worth of stuff. The fact that I’ve not once before this contested a missing package probably helped to grease things. I’m obviously not trying to scam Amazon here.

Legends.

Patience, young Padawan

It’s funny to see a package to be delivered by USPS reach the destination facility, only to be diverted away. The package is in San Francisco, I’m in San Francisco, why then did it go up towards Eureka? Some intrepid sorter must have put my purchased item into the wrong bin. Granted, the thing I bought is rather small. I’d be amazed if, say, a television set would have gotten erroneously diverted. The post office is footing that fuel bill, not me.

Good news though: the package has since diverted back to San Fransisco, and I should be getting it today. God willing.

It goes back to the my main theme of 2023: have patience. The lack of patience have time and time again prove to be detrimental. Speeding up the process (the illusion of it, anyways) instead of letting things take their natural course have led to some huge mistakes. Like that time I wiped a whole hard-drive with user data - and no backup whatsoever to support that mistake. I’ve seen the lack of patience cause my friend to get physically injured. It can be quite pernicious.

The hubris is in that we think we can control the future. That getting to the desired outcome as quickly as possible will (finally) make us happy. What we need to remember is that’s a never-ending hamster wheel. You’re always going to be looking towards some future event for satisfaction, one after the next. Let’s say your impatience did get you the result faster: you’ll only be momentarily happy before something else on your list of wants need fast-forwarding.

I was for a split second annoyed that my package was not coming on the originally specified day. But I reminded myself it’s going to be okay to wait the extra few days. The boost of joy from receiving the thing is vanishingly ephemeral.

Giving life.