Can you say WASTEFUL?

Today I was out at lunch & stopped by the gas station to get me a soda (my once a week splurge). As I was walking to my car, the post man stopped me & said he had a package for me. I squealed with delight. A package, I love packages. The postman said he squealed with delight too when he saw me, as it meant he didn't have to drive through the construction mess on the street out in front of my office in order to deliver the package to me. So he handed me my package with a smile & then drove off into the sunset (oh I guess it was too early for a sunset, but you get the picture).

I hurriedly (is that a word? Must be, as it came up with the correct spelling when I ran spell check) ran to my car so I could drive back to my office to open it up. I was anxious with excitement (even though I already knew what was in the box). But when I finally got back to work I forgot all about my package (food won my attention at this point).

So now I've been back from lunch for hours & all of a sudden I remembered my package in the car. I ran out to retrieve my sweet little package & brought it into my office to open up. Once I started opening it up I realized that the shipper of the package had played a cruel joke on me. They had taped up the entire box!!!! I thought that they had just wrapped it in kraft paper, but no. They taped up every square inch of the box with the most stickiest brown tape they could find. I had to keep unwrapping & unwrapping tape in order to try & get to my prize inside.

It was taking way too long & the tape was sticking to me & my long hair kept getting in the way & it was getting stuck to the tape. Ouch. I needed help. HELP!!!!! I yelled. Brandon came to my rescue. He grabbed the box away from me & finally got enough of the tape off to open it up.

Inside was my coke box that I won off ebay for $2.93. What a deal. But I bet that the shipper spent more on the tape than they made on the sale. What a waste. And why did they use, I mean waste, so much tape? It is because they used a USPS Priority mail box and shipped the item 1st class mail. The post office frowns upon you using priority mail boxes for anything other than priority mail, so the shipper had to cover up every part of the box as to not be caught in their deception.

And how do I know all of this, you ask? Because I too sell on ebay & when you order the "free" priority mail boxes from USPS, they make you check a little box that says "under penalty of law, you are not to use the priority mail boxes for anything but priority mail, so help you God". Well not exactly like that, but close. Plus I have turned priority mail boxes inside out in order to use them for parcel post shipping & I got caught!!!! And once you are caught, the item is returned to you to put in an appropriate box with a nasty note from the post office that "What you did is a NO NO!!!!! and don't do it again". So this particular seller was trying to "not get caught". But at what cost?

I'm just glad that Lynne (the woman I work with) is on vacation. She is the "Waste police" and she would have been quite upset to see the waste of tape.

Below are photos. Sorry that they are not the best. I left my camera at home (it is usually in my purse for just these kind of moments). I had to use the "El Cheapo" camera at work. It takes crummy photos. Also, I forgot to take picture before I started unwrapping all the tape. And it wasn't until Brandon got the box open that he said, "I'll bet you'll write in the blog about this". Ding, ding, ding, the light went on & a post for the blog was born. And then I wished I had a taken a "before" picture of the wrapped up box.


Proof of the waste:

Evidence A: Box that originally was covered head to toe in brown sticky tape. See the wad of tape in front of the box. This amount of tape came off just the top of the box & I didn't even uncover the entire top of box.


The final result: My new old Coke box. This will go in my Coke/Game room once it is completed. Mike still needs to put up the shelves so I can put all my collectibles up and get them off the floor. But my poor hubby has been sick for the past month & hasn't felt up to it. Maybe this weekend. Last night he fixed something & said to me "Aren't you glad you didn't marry a dumb ass?". My response "But I did marry a smart ass". Priceless!!