It must be me.

Apparently, I don't understand logistics. Keep in mind here that for seven years, I worked at Serta Mattress in Palm Beach Florida, where it was my job to schedule approximately 1500 mattress per day to locations around the state, including 33 Sam's locations that required a delivery time with a fifteen minute window, and being late caused Serta to be charged back a couple thousand dollars.

I managed this in an eight hour day 'upstairs' in administration, and after being advanced to Shipping Manager, I oversaw the loading of these trucks personally and put in fourteen hour days, on salary, at least four times a week.

And if a customer was told when he placed an order, it would be there the NEXT day, (and we had a special color code for the nearly 500 mattresses to be MADE that day and SHIPPED the next morning,) it HAPPENED. "MY" customers expected it, my boss expected it, and I DAMN SURE expected it. And made sure it happened. I took a lot of pride in that. People used to take pride in their work. But then, being a Patriot used to be a good thing, too.

But apparently, I learned nothing of logistics in my tenure as a shipping manager. Now I'm told by a company that uses UPS that '3 day delivery' means up to 7 business days. That was last week. The package was very small, very cheap merchandise, from a company called BudK aka CHKadels, whose name I won't mention. UPS however, did deliver it in 4 days from the time they picked it up.

And last Friday, my brother told me he had a late present being shipped to me, and it should be at my house within 'a day or so', and gave me the tracking number. Only this time, it was FedEx.

On Wednesday, I got notified at 4:13 AM that the package status was 'On truck for delivery'. Last NIGHT I got a message at 6:21 PM that stating "Local weather delay - Delivery not attempted".

Keeping in mind that I was out in my t-shirt yesterday, I called this morning to find out how bad the weather had been less than 30 miles away from me, that caused this inability to deliver.

Long story shorter: It was the weather in MEMPHIS that caused the delay. The truck had too much on it to deliver due to backlogs out of Tennessee. So if they got this huge influx of trucks all at once, wouldn't you think they would still be able to deliver a package that was loaded ON the local truck for delivery? After being in business for as long as FedEx has, don't they have some kind of inkling how much can be done by one delivery driver in one day? Approximately, kinda? I mean, come on! This is a company that my computer corrects the spelling if I don't capitalize the second "E"!

So I asked what the cut off time for delivery was. And was told 'usually' around 8PM. But that last minute pick ups sometimes had to be made.

I'm not buying this line of shit. They use 'contract' drivers who get paid on a per package basis. And if you have trucks sitting doing nothing over in Memphis, shove that shit back in the warehouse where the weather IS bad, and send them to cover logistics problems where it AIN'T. Plan for these weather related delays, instead of using them to excuse poor business practices. Especially if all you DO is pick up and deliver shit.

I guess I'm just a hick that doesn't understand these things. But I understand what customer service and satisfaction used to mean. And it sure ain't what it means today.