Time-Thieves

We all make mistakes. We are all absent-minded and scatter-brained at times. Myself as much as the next person. However, we don't all work in fields where our mistakes or inattentiveness result in stealing other people's time and causing them a lot of anger and annoyance.

My entirely non-scientific and highly subjective research in the field of parcel delivery services has revealed that the number of (likely grossly underpaid and hence not really motivated to do a good job) people who do a messy job is particularly high in this line of work. I remember an incident a few years back when I had to hunt after a parcel that apparently had already been delivered and signed for only to find that it had been delivered not to me (or my office address, rather) but to a random brick and mortrar store of the brand I had bought it from online...for reasons only known to the delivery person. I had to go to that shop, be questionned by the store manager and then generously handed an already openend parcel. Great. Last week I spent a lot of time on the phone talking to UPS callcenter agents, most of which had such thick foreign accents that we could barely communicate...which resulted in the tracking status update not reflecting where the parcel was actually delivered to. I trekked to a "service point" (aka mobile phone repair shop not anywhere near either my home, nor my workplace) only to find out the parcel was not there. It took more quality time in the hotline to find out that I could actually retrieve it at my local post office, after waiting in line for 15 minutes. 

Arguably, just a sign that I should not order anything online any more, but annoying all the same.