Livin the Dream?
Disillusioned UPSer
We love you, UPS customer. You pay our paycheck.
There are a few ways I wish to show appreciation, by saving you money (more to be added as I think of them)
1. Please do not put "Fragile" stickers on your boxes. Very sorry, but they are meaningless. The boxes that have "Fragile" stickers, the boxes with no stickers, and the boxes with stickers that say "Kick the living SH__ out of this package", all get treated the same. There is only one exception - Boxes with multiple "Fragile" stickers are beat to hell on purpose.
2. "This Side Up" stickers. Dear God, if you only knew. The only time this sticker does anything is when the package is finally placed on your porch. Trust me, it has pointed in every other direction along the way. Don't send anything that has to stay in one position - it won't.
3. Cell phone companies - I'm certain that it is extremely important to save that few extra pennies by sending your phones in tiny white bags, when most people pay $400 for a stupid phone and $149.99/month for the "Family Fav 5 talk-to-all, you gonna pay out your butt" plan. Spend an extra buck for each phone shipment, and send the phones in a box. The bags you send might as well have a huge STEAL ME PLEASE sticker on them, but we don't read stickers.
4. We appreciate that you like pizza and beer. So do we. The boxes you receive your pizza and beer in are for, you guessed it, pizza and beer. When you send your Grandmas rare Ming Dynasty vase across country wrapped in duct tape & a cut up pizza box (You've tried the rest, now try the "FRAGILE"), we find it hard to take you seriously. To save time & money, simply smash the vase before shipping it.
5. You know those guys at the County Fair that guess your weight correctly or you win a prize? Well, they cheat, they have a scale under you. And we at UPS are better at knowing the weight of a box than them. UPS employees can look at a box ON ANOTHER PLANET and know the weight within a pound or so. So when you ship that used automatic transmission from a '71 Pontiac (rear axle included) and you put the weight at "25lbs", you are not fooling anyone. Put the right weight on, or it screws up your shipment. Speaking of heavy boxes.....
6. Never put "69lbs" as the weight. Any box sent thru UPS with a weight of 69lbs might as well have a sticker on it that says "This box was freakin heavy, but we don't want to pay the 70+ pound rate". But we don't read the stickers. It will be re-weighed, found to weigh 270lbs, and you will get your Pontiac transmission returned un-delivered.
7. Never ship florescent lights. God himself cannot package them so they will not get broken. Buy them locally.
8. Shipping Nuts & bolts - small boxes, lots of tape, heavy, heavy cardboard please. If when you wrap the nuts & bolts in a used pizza box (see above) and it splits open & spills all over before we even pick it up, I would venture to say that the box won't "heal" itself during its' cross-country delivery - the receiver will most probably receive an empty, broken box.
9. Please use this handy "Is My Packaging Adequate" test - Whatever you are shipping, wrap & box it. Bring it into the largest room in your home, and stand in one corner. Take your package, and throw it as hard as you can into the opposite corner, but you have to hit the ceiling on the way. If the contents survives this, it has a 50% chance of surviving shipping, which is as good as you are gonna get.
There are a few ways I wish to show appreciation, by saving you money (more to be added as I think of them)
1. Please do not put "Fragile" stickers on your boxes. Very sorry, but they are meaningless. The boxes that have "Fragile" stickers, the boxes with no stickers, and the boxes with stickers that say "Kick the living SH__ out of this package", all get treated the same. There is only one exception - Boxes with multiple "Fragile" stickers are beat to hell on purpose.
2. "This Side Up" stickers. Dear God, if you only knew. The only time this sticker does anything is when the package is finally placed on your porch. Trust me, it has pointed in every other direction along the way. Don't send anything that has to stay in one position - it won't.
3. Cell phone companies - I'm certain that it is extremely important to save that few extra pennies by sending your phones in tiny white bags, when most people pay $400 for a stupid phone and $149.99/month for the "Family Fav 5 talk-to-all, you gonna pay out your butt" plan. Spend an extra buck for each phone shipment, and send the phones in a box. The bags you send might as well have a huge STEAL ME PLEASE sticker on them, but we don't read stickers.
4. We appreciate that you like pizza and beer. So do we. The boxes you receive your pizza and beer in are for, you guessed it, pizza and beer. When you send your Grandmas rare Ming Dynasty vase across country wrapped in duct tape & a cut up pizza box (You've tried the rest, now try the "FRAGILE"), we find it hard to take you seriously. To save time & money, simply smash the vase before shipping it.
5. You know those guys at the County Fair that guess your weight correctly or you win a prize? Well, they cheat, they have a scale under you. And we at UPS are better at knowing the weight of a box than them. UPS employees can look at a box ON ANOTHER PLANET and know the weight within a pound or so. So when you ship that used automatic transmission from a '71 Pontiac (rear axle included) and you put the weight at "25lbs", you are not fooling anyone. Put the right weight on, or it screws up your shipment. Speaking of heavy boxes.....
6. Never put "69lbs" as the weight. Any box sent thru UPS with a weight of 69lbs might as well have a sticker on it that says "This box was freakin heavy, but we don't want to pay the 70+ pound rate". But we don't read the stickers. It will be re-weighed, found to weigh 270lbs, and you will get your Pontiac transmission returned un-delivered.
7. Never ship florescent lights. God himself cannot package them so they will not get broken. Buy them locally.
8. Shipping Nuts & bolts - small boxes, lots of tape, heavy, heavy cardboard please. If when you wrap the nuts & bolts in a used pizza box (see above) and it splits open & spills all over before we even pick it up, I would venture to say that the box won't "heal" itself during its' cross-country delivery - the receiver will most probably receive an empty, broken box.
9. Please use this handy "Is My Packaging Adequate" test - Whatever you are shipping, wrap & box it. Bring it into the largest room in your home, and stand in one corner. Take your package, and throw it as hard as you can into the opposite corner, but you have to hit the ceiling on the way. If the contents survives this, it has a 50% chance of surviving shipping, which is as good as you are gonna get.
