Waiting for a Greek God

I had the good fortune this week to have to wait in for a parcel. Many parcels arrive at our house, either as surprises for one another or as a result of my ocassional Ebay habit. Often you have to guess which day a parcel will arrive and wait around accordingly. I like to think of this as a fine art and a dying skill, which fortunately like the ability to make wooden boxes using tongue-and-groove joints, I have (thank you Castle Manor Upper School). Man delivers parcel, I sign, all is good.

Then comes a day when a parcel is given a delivery date. Delivery Date. De-Liv-ery Da-te. No, it doesn’t matter how I say it, it still seems to suggest the date of delivery. Apparently this is not so. In this day and age of Carbon offsets, and everyone being worried about Carbon Footprints, this is how I see it working. Let’s say for the sake of argument the delivery man fits 30 deliveries in his van each day. On Tuesday 30 people stay in waiting for their deliveries. On Wednesday, delivery guy ‘x’ turns up to deliver their parcels, only to find 20 or so of them aren’t in (afterall, they stayed in yesterday). ‘x’ returns to base to put those 20 parcels back on the shelf, and take out 30 new ones. Those of us who waited in call to complain. On Thursday, ‘x’ brings back out those 20 ‘failed deliveries’ plus 10 extras.

There are a number of problems with this system. Firstly, delicvery guy ‘x’ must be very demoralised in his work, spending all day as he does failing to get an answer at doors and driving around a full van. My parcel spends one day being chaufferred around in a van for no reason, before spending a second being usefully driven to my house. What a waste of a)wages, b)fuel, c)delivery guy ‘x’s energy, d)my time off. The ultimate irony? Presumably my parcel couldn’t be delivered on Tuesday because on Tuesday delievery guy ‘x’ was actually making the second trip to those houses he found empty on Friday (who had wasted their Thursday taking time off work), and had telephoned on Monday to rearrange delivery! I expect more from a Greek God, frankly.