Chip Bok for December 28, 2013

Yeah, blame the shippers?

Hmmm, the items I sent USPS got to their destinations. The items Big Online Retailer sent UPS still haven’t all arrived (5 didn’t make it before Christmas, 3 still pending). Seems like the efficiency of that private entity could learn a thing from the government agency…

Here in Dallas, the ice storm was THREE WEEKS before Christmas, and UPS had still not caught up with deliveries. So yes, I’d say blame the shipper.

I’d blame the weather, which was horrible. Remember that they go flat out despite normal weather, but ice storms can’t be dealt with as snow storms are. I’ve experienced both, and I’ll take snow any day. You can’t shovel ice.We had four presents arrive the day we were to give them and two arrived the day after Christmas. We just had printed out a picture of them, so our daughter knew what was coming and still got excited.

In our small town, UPS had 3,000 packages to deliver in two days of “last minute guaranteed deliveries” . My package came exactly as guarnteed, because I ordered at an intelligennt time, knowing our remote location. BTW: my neghbor is a UPS driver, and she ran her tail off for the last THREE WEEKS!

Cut ’em some slack, Jack!

Let us not forget that FexEx had the same thing happen, and that the problem was really caused by folks who waited until the last minute to order no matter where they lived.

Like dtroutma I ordered my gifts early in December and received everything before Christmas. Plan ahead folks.

Really now, who could have expected bad weather in winter?.I was amused when NOAA predicted an especially warm, mild winter shortly before the first ice storm of several.May still average out milder, though. We shall see what we shall see.

Uh, we’ve had three YEARS of extremely mild and warm winters in our region based on “historical record”. We’ve got two more weeks of “warm” weather and no snow predicted. Yep, we’ve also had a couple nights of record, or “near record” lows in between, and THAT is representative of “climate change”. (BTW, that “record” with paleobotany goes back now over 6,000 years, and though several very long DROUGHT periods occurred (several hundred years) the plant record shows our warming is ongoing, and causing greater impacts biologically, not just as “weather”.)

I think that’s the point of the cartoon. While people were blaming UPS, it was more likely caused by the growing number of people making last minute shipments.

And I note that civility you praise is distinctly lacking in YOUR next post. Figures. “One rule for thee and another for me.”

Really any blame held by UPS, FedEx, etc is at the executive/managerial level.

The true believers who are gutting the postal service in order to benefit UPS and FedEx do so on the assumption that the “free market” will work to the benefit of consumers rather than stockholders..Or maybe they aren’t that naive and I’m just assuming they are foolish rather than evil. In any case, Chip, UPS didn’t have to set up their ordering system to fail. Incompetent or greedy, your “free market” let people down.

^BTW, FedEx contracts with USPS to deliver a lot of their packages in rural areas, increasing their profits. (FedEx is also vehemently anti-union, and UPS is union, and takes much better care of those hard working troops in the field.)