An Open Letter To USPS

Dear USPS Person,

I am writing you this note in the hopes of clarifying a couple of confounding conundrums that have cropped up ever since your delivery of Big Ugly Brown Box A, or BUBBA, at my address. Now, while I’m completely satisfied with the speed at which BUBBA appeared at my door, and everything contained within BUBBA appears to be working properly, I am a little confused about the package itself. You see, my goods were originally shipped in a Small Nice Off-White Package, or SNOW P for short.

Perhaps you can now see my confusion.

SNOW P was shipped on Monday morning, with my very expensive electronic home theater component safely and snugly packaged within. Plenty of Styrofoam, bubble-wrap and other anti-damage precautions were used to make sure said audio component would arrive at my door in one piece and without harm. I know this because the component was shipped to me in the manufacturers original box and they pride themselves in their attention to shipping procedure for their products.

Yet, it was BUBBA that arrived at my door Tuesday evening. Hmmmm.

I can only conclude that, sometime between getting picked up and being dropped off, something tragic happened to SNOW P. Perhaps, on your way to your usual delivery route, you were abducted by aliens and subjected to weird, sexual experiments and were able to escape only after discovering the aliens’ inherent fear of white cardboard. Or, maybe you were caught in a freak llama stampede in Queens and, recalling a story you read in National Geographic while sitting on the toilet, knew that the only way to survive was to use a white cardboard box as a shield to ward off the angry llamas.

You know, Captain America style.

In any case, SNOW P disappeared and BUBBA rose up to take its place. I’m not disparaging BUBBA, because I’m sure that BUBBA is a fine cardboard box, but it does puzzle me that BUBBA is so amazingly large. In comparison to SNOW P, BUBBA is frickin huge! To put this into perspective, BUBBA looks to be able to accommodate an item roughly the size of a 42” TV, while SNOW P was roughly the size of a DVD player.

Double Hmmmm.

Now, all of this would have been fine if it weren’t for one other teensy, tiny problem with BUBBA. You must understand that the audio component contained within SNOW P was very expensive and fragile, which would explain its unusually high level of anti-damage packaging. One would think that if SNOW P had somehow become damaged beyond repair in transit, that upon seeing the amount of precautionary packaging around said audio component, whoever it was that repackaged it within BUBBA would have taken great care to keep it safe from harm.

But alas, this was not to be.

Contained within BUBBA were some connection wires, the user manual and my very expensive audio component. That’s all. No bubble-wrap, or Styrofoam, or any anti-damage precautions besides air pressure and prayer. The simple fact that my component works at all is a testament to the manufacturers build quality and not to BUBBA’s usefulness as a protective measure.

In essence, BUBBA sucks.

In light of all of the above, I would like to make a suggestion for you should you ever need to re-pack something else in the future. Feel free to share this bit of wisdom with your fellow delivery people and, in fact, with any and all people you might ever come into contact with who are sending a package through the mail.

There’s no such thing as too much Styrofoam and/or bubble-wrap.

Now, lest you believe this is the end of this, let me assure you that the manufacturer and I are going to be lodging formal complaints with the USPS. And, just in case you decided to skip the rest of this letter and only read the last paragraph or two, let me sum up this letter in 25 words or less, just for you.

Use your frickin brains, Jackhole. It says ‘fragile’ right on the frickin box, you frickin stupid frick.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
GeekMan