I’ve been busy and brain dead and not in the mood for recreational writing, brain having been used for those things I do that help pay the rent.

Life in a nutshell: On the downside, we’re all sick. On the upside, it’s spring in Bavaria. Unfortunately, the former prevents really enjoying the latter.

That’s about it right now… not all that exciting.

The problem is that because a lot of businesses only ship with them, they’re often the only game in town (because they’re cheap), so it’s not as if anyone has a choice in terms of using them most of the time.

I certainly never chose to ship with UPS when I had other alternatives. Your mileage may vary of course, but in recent years, my experiences with UPS were not good. Don’t get me wrong – some individual delivery drivers have been kind and helpful and diligent, and it is a shame that what I generally presume to be a bad customer service model (rather than individual drivers) means that there’s more focus on the substantial negatives people experience than the people who do a good job. That’s unfortunately the way of the world.

Buuuuuuuuut…

A gentleman referring to himself as “Mr. Big” (overcompensate much, dear?) from Florida (specifically, 76.108.125.137 , which resolves to a dynamic Comcast IP (c-76-108-125-137.hsd1.fl.comcast.net) - West Palm Beach, perhaps?) chose to demonstrate how classy some of UPS’s employees really are by leaving me the following message this morning:

you people are idiots,, please dont use ups,bunch of retards,,first off unless you live in complete filth in the ghetto , or THE SHIPPER PAID TO MAKE SURE WE DONT LEAVE THE PACKAGE WITHOUT A SIGNATURE then you are outta luck,we cant leaveit,, the last thing we want to do is go back to the same stop the next day, as for the sea cow that said ‘ oh,, thats terrible the driver would not bring the package up for the pregnant woman” boo hoo,, we have on average about 190 stops a day and everyone we deal with has a bad back, is crippled,, old,, pregnant, retarded, some reason why they want us to do more than we are paid for…jerks,,, ups has been around 100 yrs and is still payin its employees well and makin a ton of money….HA HA HA

Hmmmm. So UPS, is this the public face you want to display?

Complain about UPS on the Internet, get told you’re a a retard, and a jerk, a sea cow for sympathizing with a pregnant woman,  and get (really, so eloquently) informed that UPS has been around forever, is making loads of money, and you, the customer, can suck it?

My personal suspicion, given the number of hits I get for UPS sucking in various forms, is that businesses that use their model of making customer service effectively unavailable (and having a standard set of falsehoods used as a delay tactic for angry customers) which don’t also provide reasonable service to their customers will eventually collapse under their own weight, though it may take a while. If you’re the only game in town by virtue of being the cheap choice of online retailers, it takes a while for customers to decide to pay for more expensive options or to simply stop using particular services until they start offering multiple shipping options. When we still lived in the US, I often opted for 2-day FedEx, USPS or DHL when it was offered, even if it was more expensive, to avoid having anything important go via UPS. I wanted to ensure I actually got what I asked for when it was supposed to come and didn’t waste multiple days waiting for it or find it stolen (by the way, “Mr. Big”, I didn’t live in the ghetto – I lived in a city. Cities are densely populated and not all people are scrupulous, as you surely know from *ahem* personal experience). If companies like UPS continue to go for increased profit margins at the expense of actually providing the service they’re paid to provide (delivering when they say they will deliver, not lying about having tried to deliver it afterwards, etc.), they will eventually run into problems, though I do suppose the lesson of the U.S. economy in the new millenium is that you can lie for a damned long time – at least long enough to run off with the profits, leaving employees like our friend here screwed.

Anyway, I should state, for the record, that I didn’t post this because I’m somehow upset by it – I’m actually amused.

Especially since Mr. Big — whose charming (and certainly fake) email address was, incidentally, entered as “slapyousideways@yahoo.com” — got here by searching for the following phrase: “why working for UPS sucks”.

UPS, you may want to have a chat with some of your Floridian employees about 1) how not to represent your company, and 2) how to be less stupid on the Internet.

Just sayin’…

(1.14.2010 – and it appears we have another winner on the employee list. Of course, it could be the same dude coming through a Tor server (don’t think I didn’t see that), but if not, welcome, “bossman” from somewhere near Valencia, CA… you’re the next contestant on the Circle of Jerks ™! – pun intended.)

So I recently found that I could block someone I didn’t really want reading my stuff on Facebook, and even though my privacy settings are pretty high, I thought I’d just be vigilant and block them there for my own peace of mind.

I am a dumbass, however.

More to the point, the Facebook programmers are dumbasses.

Now, I don’t really post anything there I’m too afraid of people reading, and more to the point, I wasn’t even intending to block anyone when I found the functionality to do it. It was just an opportunistic thing.

So.

I enter this person’s name in the “block” field of the privacy settings. It searches and finds me a huge list of people with this person’s name, so I go down to the search function and type in an email address, which I get wrong.

So I type it in again.

And then I get a message that reads like this:

“jane_and_john_doe@example.com” is already a Facebook user, so we’ve sent them a friend request for you.

I couldn’t breathe for a good 10 seconds. My hands went numb.

Three frakking years of no contact and stupid-assed Facebook decides to fix it for me. Auto-freaking-matically.

I found that the request can be revoked if one is able to successfully block the user, which I was.

Unfortunately, that does not prevent them from being sent an e-mail saying you want to be their friend, even if they will not be allowed to once they click the link.

This is probably a sign that I should have avoided Facebook to begin with as I intended, but I just decided to Hell with it. I’m still not going to have contact with this person.

Makes me want to cry, sort of, but I’ll get over it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t think there’s any question that this all by itself tells you that he’s the absolute wrong person to steer the ship during this economic disaster.

So when Spaf posted this the other day, I just knew I had to steal it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf1y9s73Nos

I always did have a bit of a crush on Michael Palin, but he really would make a much better VP

So today someone had to be home all day so that a package could be delivered via UPS 2nd Day Air. It’s no biggie, but it’s annoying to have to make sure someone’s upstairs to hear the door so that it can be signed for etc., and since T and I are out for a large portion of tomorrow, it’s important that I get the stuff today.

(N.B. It’s just some train reservations, not a Wii, sadly…)

So. I check on the packages from the UPS website most of the day. OUT FOR DELIVERY from 4:44 am on, it says. So, of course, I’m sure I’ll get it today, especially since it was expedited service, right?

7 pm rolls around. Still no package, and so I call the 1-800 number. I mean, 7 pm is after the close of the business day, isn’t it?

Apparently not. Apparently my package is still out for delivery, and could come as late as 8 pm.

Fine… we leave the front door open, and meanwhile, we get the baby ready for bed. There’s someone near the front door at all times.

Then, at 8:30, T is finally in bed. I half-expect there to be a notice taped to the door, since I closed it for the 20 minutes it took to rock him down (2 meters from the door, btw) and this is a trick they’ve pulled before… sneaking up to the doorstep and putting a notice on the door while we’re here without knocking… but no, there’s nothing.

So I check the website. Apparently, they tried to deliver the packages at 7:56 and no one was here.

Except that at 7:56 our front door was open and there was someone sitting right next to it.

LYING BASTARDS.

So I call the 1-800 number and complain. Their excuse is that “oh, the driver tried to deliver to the wrong address” (let’s say my address is 22 Apple Road, which it is not, but it’s similar. The address they claim they tried to deliver to was like 700 E. 1st St. GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK – it just happens that 4 minutes before they break their price guarantee they make a delivery attempt to the wrong address which is in no way similar??? I might add that this was probably the last stop on his route on the way to my place, since that’s about a mile away, but COME ON…).

My recourse? Um, I can have them type in a message to send a complaint to the local office.

NOT ENOUGH, UPS.

You guys suck.

I’m going to notify the sender and have them try to get their money back, because damnit, if I have to pay that much for postage, I’m not going to pay to be lied to.