Nearly everyone orders from Amazon these days. Some people think that Amazon IS the internet.
We order from there because they stock nearly everything and you can get most things
the next day. We’re all lazy bastards that like to click a button and have someone magically
appear from a van with the thing you imagined in your head the day before.
Being a few seconds away from manifesting a single click into a physical reality
is a compelling thing indeed…
On the face of it, the whole thing is brilliant.
Except at times it isn’t.
The delivery drivers are rushed off their feet and have taken to just dumping your parcel
in what they deem as a safe place, taking a photo and pissing off to the next delivery.
That’s what happened to me today. If you ask me, this safe place malarkey is an exaggerated
claim. It’s not like there a soldier on sentry duty guarding your wheelbin or anything.
Amazon notified me, “Your Order has been delivered”.
I checked everywhere and there wasn’t a single thing to be found. You turn into some kind
of demented lunatic checking inside bins and then looking around outside to see if you can
see someone holding your parcel… or a thief running off down the road with a Chandler Bing
grin on their face.
Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
So I went back to the order details, to see what this photo actually looked like.
Here it is:
Yep, that’s definitely a parcel and it looks very neat but I didn’t recognise the pipe
or the metal bit, which means it was in the vicinity and not as safe as they claimed
it was *cue dramatic music*.
I ended up playing makeshift detective trying to spot the pipe as I walked up and
down the road, like some lame game you don’t want to play but you still end up playing
it all the same.
Miraculously I spotted a wheelie bin right at the back of someone’s entrance, if you’ll
pardon the turn of phrase. I then had to make a judgement call as to whether to march
up there and retrieve the thing I knew was mine.
That’s the problem in 2025 – you now have to overthink even retrieving something
you know is yours because everyone has cameras rolling 24/7 ready to upload the
footage onto a Facebook Group, if you’re not too careful.
Undeterred, I did it anyway. Twas mine and nobody was keeping my precious,
I can tell you that. Not even Smeagol.
I should have been happy about but I wasn’t. I don’t like incompetence or companies
that don’t give a shit about their customers, which I know sounds very ‘adulty’, but even
a coin has two sides.
I also summarised this post in a way that Louis Walsh would say, “You made it your own”:
I think my tweet above was also influenced by watching “Marching Powder” starring Danny Dyer,
the day before. I think if you refer to something as a mug, it works on so many levels beyond that
of a receptacle which holds beverages.
“You muggin’ me off?“, is another good one.
Let’s go back to the parcel thing:
All this ‘hide it behind a wheelie bin’ without ringing the doorbell is a load of old bollocks
as far as I’m concerned. Since when has a delivery person been so busy they couldn’t lift
a finger to press a doorbell. Yes, I’m moaning but c’mon.
I would be even more annoyed if it was a really expensive item.
Imagine ordering a laptop or something and having some delivery driver who hasn’t got
time to breathe, stuff it behind a neighbours wheelie bin before having a quick flash (with
their camera of course) before whizzing off up the road, leaving you to solve the next great
detective mystery.
The Case of The Inconveniently Misplaced Laptop.
It would be even worse if you’d ordered a vibrator and Mrs Grimshaw two doors down
took in the delivery and accidentally opened it, not realising the ‘item of delight’ was
intended for someone else.
“Vibrator For Sale: Only Used Once (Not By The Owner)”
I have never ordered a vibrator. Not one of any colour (not even purple) or description,
but that is besides the point.
Needless to say, I don’t like it. All this dumping shit outside people’s houses and disappearing,
so I thought I’d sign off with a Friday post which is the online equivalent of a mini rant.
Feel better now. Anddd relax.
The headphones worked great. Every cloud and all that.
Thanks for reading, see ya in the next one. Let’s play this one out with
“Your Woman” by White Town.
Why that song, you may ask? Well, I was talking to someone about one
hit numbers the other day and that one sprang to mind (as well as 99
red balloons)…