Fed-Exiety

Readers who I talk to on a daily basis have seen the title of this blog entry and pointed their mouses directly to the X in the top right corner. I have talked so much about fed-ex since Monday that I noticed as of yesterday Regina has been sending me right to voicemail, Lady hasn’t been responding to my emails, Amy seems to be too busy to talk during work, and even Jude told me that if I mention the goddamn package one more time she is going to call Dr. Kevorkian to put her out of her misery.

I’ll make this short and sweet (as if!) – on Monday I worked on a very important, very time sensitive document that needed to be in a far away country by a certain time or I would be..hmm, what is the proper business term…oh yeah, totally frigin screwed. Monday night I took it to Federal Express and even took a moment to ask the busy clerk if the package looked alright. He glanced at it and said it looked fine (in his defense - I didn’t exactly define what “alright” meant, he could have thought I was asking “does this box make this package look fat?”).

So all was good, my package was scheduled to be delivered to the far away country ahead of schedule (I won’t say what country, but my previous blog, the one down under you may say, will give a hint. Mate.) and I could resume my normal daily activities of obsessively counting rolls of toilet paper and doling out my opinions of subjects that are truly none of my business.

Tuesday morning I get into work and the first words out of Amy’s mouth were “I don’t want you to panic”. A message was left overnight from Fed Ex. Apparently there was a issue scanning the package and I needed to call back right away. Instead of calling I sprinted down there (of course my definition of sprint is a slow, tortoise like walk with plenty of breaks).

Huffing and puffing I explained the message to the clerk, who in turn called over the manager, who then told me that the package wouldn't scan but no worries, they punched it in. Same tracking number? Yup. So really nothing changes from last night? Nope.

Okay then. Everything is alright. And I was free to go back to the office and begin my workday activities of stuttering and avoiding eye contact with my boss. But I couldn’t shake the feeling, something wasn’t right. All of a sudden I felt as though I had developed some sort of psychic ability – I could hear the package crying out to me – “Scotch!! Help! Help!! I am not where they say I am!! I am being delayed!! Help!” So psychic ability, and the whole thing where you can check the status of your package on fedex.com pushed me to go check one last time by the end of the day.

The night clerk was now on. Hi, explained my situation, here to double check. Oh, you, I called you he said. Thanks for that, I came in this morning and…..HOLY SHIT HE JUST PULLED OUT MY PARCEL!

Now, I had worked in retail and customer service for years through highschool and college – so I am not one of those people who flip out in stores and give shit to sales people. I took a breath, explained to the clerk that I appreciated his call last night, it was the right thing to do and I appreciate it.

BUT.
W
T
F
?????

I could lose my job. Oh my god I could lose my job over this. Look at my face, I said lose my job. Yes I know it wasn’t you who told me it was fine. Yes I understand what happened. Yes, again, thank you for calling me last night, thank you again for calling me last night. BUT WTF????

At that point Amy, who is my hero and was with me by the way, was all but chanting, lighting candles and giving me a deep tissue massage to try to calm me down. Holding me back like a boxing kagaroo you might say. I pulled my shit together for a moment to ensure that goddamn package was going on the next flight out of this one-horse town (okay so it’s Cambridge), never to return. But the best they could do was estimate a delivery of 3 hours after my deadline.

So there was nothing I could do but worry. Worry and pray.

I chose to pray to Judas the Apostle. You know, the one who ended up turning Jesus into Pontius Pilate's soldiers?

I chose him for a few reasons, the first being that Jesus seems to be wicked busy these days and he gets BULLSHIT when I bother him with minor stuff like this, and also I figured that Judas was the one who delivered the kiss that put Jesus away, and although the bible doesn’t come right out and say it I can interpret that he was pretty prompt about it. There was nothing in there about guards checking their sun dials and saying “he better hurry his ass up, I’ve got a stoning to attend tonight.”

So the past few days I did nothing but worry sick about this, checking fedex.com every few seconds, memorizing flight patterns and time zones. I even hired a package delivery expert to analyze the situation - my brother, who is now a firefighter but was once a driver for UPS, took the job for the fee of one can of diet coke.

But all’s well that ends well.

I am happy to report that on Thursday, 9:48 PM Eastern Standard Time (Friday, 11:48 AM Far Way Country Time), a bouncing, beautiful, package was delivered, weighing in at 1.8 pounds.

I celebrated with a can of Fosters.

And I promise friends, I will never speak of this again. Not even if you ask me about it. Okay maybe if you ask me specific questions I will give brief answers or give a presentation of some sort.

Happy Friday.