Kiddo#1 is learning the ins and outs of ebay with my help. I use my account, help him find baseball cards, and then he uses money from his budget to pay for the ones he wants. And joy, his first seller tried to scam us. (Oy!)
Now we’re in the waiting period between the purchase and the arrival. He is quizzing me about the vagaries of the postal service, how long things take to ship, and what the different classes of mail mean. In response to that, he came up with the following, and I said I’d post it here for him:
Post Office Classes For Shipping
Express: Next day
Priority: two days
1st class: ship item well
2nd class: regular shipping
3rd class: shipped well, but slow
4th class: driven on highways
5th class: driven on back roads
6th class: taken on horse and buggy
7th class: walked there
8th class: driven halfway there, and you go halfway
9th class: get it yourself!
10th class: All packages shipped 10th class go to your house, and you pick out which one is yours
11th class: same as 10th class, but you go to the post office to sort
12th class: not shipped until you call to see why it hasn’t been shipped yet
13th class: empty box replacing the real package, shipped on horse and buggy
14th class: blown to your house by the wind
15th class: blown to the wrong house, then walked over to the right house by your ugly neighbor
16th class: not shipped at all
17th class: not mailed
18th class: left in mailbox and not taken
I believe I’ve trained him well, don’t you?
He forgot “notice left when no attempt was made to deliver–package lost immediately”, which is the default where I live and “will be delivered on time, even during an invasion by man-eating extraterrestrials”, which is the default where I used to work (Madison Ave–where all the publishing houses are).
Then there’s “Will be delivered five minutes after you ask Ivy about it”, which is the service my boss has. Seriously, every time he’s expecting a package, he asks me about it and it shows up immediately after that. It doesn’t matter WHEN he asks, only THAT he asks. As I don’t work in the mailroom, I’m not sure WHY he asks, but that’s another thing entirely.
Will be delivered immediately after you ask supplier’s QA Clerk for duplicates — of the XRay films, which don’t have duplicates. Our Clerk used to “love” that one.
How about my father’s one, “Delivered two weeks late with tire tracks right down the center of the envelope”?
He replied, “I know postage is cheap, but did you have to drive over it?”