Saturday, January 05, 2008

Tales from the Qwik Pack & Ship - Chapter 7

This may be my last entry regarding the Qwik Pack & Ship. I'm not sad about that. Not even a little bit. It's not that I haven't enjoyed this job. It's just that it's amazing how boring this little shop can be 92% of the time.

I leave you with my final observations from the Qwik Pack & Ship. Have I mentioned before that UPS and FedEx do not deliver to PO Boxes? I'm not sure if I have or not. Really this stuff runs together. Today I had another instance of someone trying to FedEx a letter to a PO Box. As the employee who inputs the information into the system, I don't look at the shipping address until well after the customer leaves. There's a reason for that, which I'll get to in a moment.

Shouldn't it be logical that conglomerations like FedEx and UPS would refuse to deliever to the Post Office? I mean, the Post Office is essentially their competition. I think if I were the owner of Pizza Hut, I'd be a little upset to find out that my employees were having Domino's delivered to the house on the weekends. I'm sure that happens all the time, but you see what I'm saying?

Now, why would I wait until the customer leaves to enter the shipping information into the FedEx (or UPS) system? It's strictly because of the listed cost of shipping. I know I've mentioned before that we mark everything up. That's what stores do, it's how they make a profit. So if I were to charge the customer $23.50 to overnight a letter, and then he or she were to see that our actual cost for shipping is only about $12.00, that may lead the customer to become angry and/or confused.

Then I'd have to try to explain what it means to make a profit in this free enterprise economy. Those DVDs you buy from Circuit City? They really only cost a couple bucks, yet you happily fork over 20 for each of them. Happy shopping kids. And happy shipping. From here on, you're on your own.

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