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- Payin’ the post office a visit on Monday, methinks.
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- Time to search, like, eBay for a pile of Shortpacked! books, maybe?
So here’s a fun Webcomic Rampage story. I’m pretty sure I’ll be telling this one a lot. It’s a doozy.
I mailed two boxes of books to Austin. One arrived perfectly! The other arrived, too, but in an interesting condition. It was, in fact, a completely new cardboard box, with the old, shredded cardboard box inside. The mailing address, return address, and postage had been exacto-knifed off the old box and taped onto the new box.
Inside the old box inside the new box was half a blender.
Yeeeeaaaaaah.
Yeah.
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Geez. Whoever did that is just… geez. Especially given those books aren’t cheap to produce I imagine.
There anything you can do to get the cost of the books recovered from postal insurance?
I’ve done the whole “insurance” thing before. You pay $2 or so extra, but it doesn’t really do you any good. They have a lot of fine print. So I didn’t bother this time, because, hey, waste of money.
So, yeah. Not sure anything will come of my coming Righteous Fury.
If the post office won’t help, go to the police.
This was stupid. They couldn’t just steal from you? They had to send a very special “Fuck you” along with it? It would’ve been easier on the thief if your package had just disappeared.
Who the hell would steal books? If you’re stealing, you probably wouldn’t read them.
Holy crap! Can you say, “inside job”? I knew ya could!
(Where did you mail the boxes to? Your hotel?)
What. Just what.
I can only imagine the sheer level of “WTF” you must have experienced while opening that box.
Mostly I was thinking, “Heyyyyy, this box sure isn’t very heavy…” Because, you know, it used to be 25 pounds of books, rather than roughly 2 pounds of blender.
I hope it was the good half.
wwwoooOOOooowww.
They’ve stolen a box of books– which was dumb, because you absolutely do not fuck with Postal Inspectors, they will mess your ass up— but in return, they have given you… LEGEND. People will be telling this story and making faces about it for decades.
Which half of the blender did you get? You reckon if you sent another box you’d get the other half?
I think it was one of you fans with a more absurdist sense of humor.
Alternatively, one of his fans with a more larcenous sense of humor.
mike was here.
If it had actually said that on the old box or the half blender, that would have been awesome.
Of course this means there’s a very angry chef out there somewhere. Who knows what happened to the books? Maybe the box fell apart and they flew out of the truck?
If I’m driving around and I see a trail of Shortpacked books strewn all over the road I’ll let you know.
Wow… I’ve seen things repackaged like that when the original packaging met an unfortunate fate. My guess would be that your box and another box containing that half a blender both got mangled in something or other and they made a poor guess as to which went in which box. There’s probably someone out there waiting for the bottom part of the blender they accidentally left with their parents when they moved out who now have a bunch of the same book and still no way to make smoothies.
That’s my guess. It’s like a recent incident I had. Luggage from Chicago to home opened. Nothing of mine missing but inside… new iPhone. But not a real iPhone (that’s cruel)… no, a knock off iPhone.
But then I got my stuff and the fake iPhone. You got… half a blender… Unleash hell!
Wow. Something similar happened to my brother and his girlfriend last year. Her mom sent Christmas presents via UPS and the package that arrived contained like 2-3 reams of paper. Ho ho ho.
I used to work at FedEx. A lot of the time boxes on the belt got damaged either from accidents or shipping problems. I was in QA (Quality Assurance). It was my job to repackage the boxes and put things back together in as good shape as possible. We used an box knife to take off the shipping tag and put them back on a new box.
I know it sucks when it happens but my section at least does the best it can… Hope you can get your shipping money back.
I don’t think he’s mad about the shipping costs, I think he’s mad about the couple-hundred-dollars worth of books he won’t get to sell now.
There must must must be some way that the rightful owner of the half blender can be tracked down and a switch made. Right? Right?!?
fuck.
… What the hell? That’s supposed to be bricks! What happened to old school theft and trickery?
Yeah, I was there watching when you opened the box. Quite the WTF? look. Loved the fact that you displayed the blender on your table during the signing period! Great meeting you, though – hope this doesn’t discourage you from coming back next year. Surely the Santa Rampage cheered you up somewhat?
Indeed! I, too, am hoping you’ll make it back next year. I wasn’t really sold on getting up at Death O’Clock and making the trip to Austin until I heard you were coming.
And hey, if you come back next year, maybe you’ll get the other half of that blender!
(if you put the two halves together perhaps they will transform into a TALKING ROBOT BLENDER)
…one named PINTSIZE!!!
My ex-roommate shipped a bunch of textbooks when he moved to California and the box arrived in similar condition. About five of his textbooks were missing, but to make up for it there were three or four books in there that he had never seen before.
When I saw your posts about this on Twitter I kept hoping you were kidding. Eeesh.
If all your rage comes to naught, may I suggest drawing an original strip on the blender and putting it on ebay? I doubt there will ever be a more unique piece of Shortpacked! memorabilia. You might get your cost compensated, at least…
I like this.
I think you should make the blender a short-term character in the strip. Maybe they try to order a blender to make food for the pink cat and instead they get half a blender, which the cat promptly absorbs.
Anyway, regardless of book issues, it was nice to see you in person! Thanks for the sketch!
That would, of course, take place in Shortpacked!, not in DOA – got confused by the RSS reader!
You absolutely MUST bring this conversation piece with you to every con for at least the next year. Just put it on the table with your books; no fanfare, not so much as an “ASK ME ABOUT MY HALF A BLENDER” card.
Then auction it off at the end of the year. FAMOUS POST OFFICE BLUNDER BLENDER WALKY DOA LOW OPEN BID.
Hell, I’d watch for it.
Hey, it could have been worse
This is true.
I bet its really a revenge ploy from Jeph Jacques!
J’ACCUSE!!!
Which book was it? Volume #1?
If the half a blender was the top half, feel free to send it to me, we need one. Kinda discovered we’re missing a piece of our blender tonight. You should also keep Craigslist in mind when searching for the comics, some shady things go on in that website.
what.
A few years ago I would have arrogantly told “typically american”. But these days posting in Europe is so hectic that post employees themselves tell not to put anything of value without several insurances plus name of every member of the shipping crew that touch the package. Concurrency, you see, it’s better than monopole: the guy shipping your packages is in the same time delivering pizzas and answering per phone at the home insurance helpdesk, all of that nights, in jail, and for half the minimum wage. No excuse, but no wonder they steal what please them. They got several of my bands CDs that I’m sure they never can sell.
The possibility that whoever stole from you is likely low, however, it might be a good idea to surf around to see if your books are being re-distributed.
Mystery solved!
I’m sick, don’t make me laugh asshole. That hurt.
Quite a while back the people who paint everything brown delivered a box that was supposed to contain four training kits to my work location. It contained:
2 Training Kits (at least they were the correct ones)
1 Black knit fabric cocktail dress, Size 0
1 Lavender poplin blazer, Size 1
1 Starter switch for a Ford Model A
Don’t blame the USPS just because they’re the USPS — I believe every shipper there is has clueless people working in the “oops” departments. And please, whoever you are, if you’re shipping fluids, pack them properly. There’s plenty that’s worse than receiving a box of books that have been marinated in, well, marinade, but that was one very unappreciative class of clients.
And for gosh sake, don’t send small, fragile, brittle, valuable objects in bubble envelopes or the regular cardboard document sending envelopes. This isn’t from personal knowledge, but I’ve seen multiple page rants among the various fountain pen and typewriter collector forums. Some of these people are hardcore about their typewriter ribbon tins….
Oh, I’m with everyone else on this — just because “these things happen” doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep the pictures on your cell phone or other portable picture sharing device. Because at conventions, you need something more to talk about than the weather.
And don’t forget to include recipient address and other contact information on the packing list. Sometimes, if the delivery company scavengers find that, they can get the right merchandise in the right reconstructed boxes. It’s freight handler amateur hour this time of year.
What amazes me is that your shipping weight should be right there on the label. If your box and the half-a-blender’s box happened to get shredded at the same time (which is surely what happened), a monkey could figure out which box was supposed to have which item.
So where can I find those black market editions of those books? I need to save some… I mean, those horrible horrible thieves. They should be strung up by their genitalia and fed to small woodland creatures.
So, Shortpacked books. Do they blend?
HAHAHAHA
WIN.
Not that this story isn’t amusing/messed up, but is anyone else wondering how often the “insane theft stories” tag will get used?
I had somebody break into the toolbox on my pickup and steal several hundred dollars worth of tools while it was parked on the street in front of the Plaza of The Americas in downtown Dallas at A-Kon a few years ago. I’d say that counts, on account of it was a dust-covered pickup truck in Texas. And some crackhead broke into it in what must have been broad daylight. Apparently not realizing that this is fucking Texas, and I was heavily armed at the time and would have killed him if I had caught him, and it would have been perfectly legal, because THIS IS FUCKING TEXAS.
I can't wait for the UltraCar/Blender fanfic.Dude!
Another case just like the blender. This guy caught them in the act!:
http://gizmodo.com/5713709/how-a-man-caught-ups-tampering-with-his-package
Dude, You are the victim of postal stupid/niceness. I work for the USPS, and can guess what happened. Bet you send the books Media Mail rate or Parcel Post because they were heavy, right? That stuff goes straight to a huge factory-type place where it’s sorted by vicious package-eating machines. All the damaged stuff gets shoved over into one place where a temp xmas helper was told to fix them up and resend them again. So here’s this person who has your address label with no box attached, and another box with no info at all. They aren’t allowed to open it up but this stuff has to go SOMEWHERE, and the boss is getting cranky about how much has accumulated due to the rush these days. Add some “oh well” into this picture, and suddenly 2+2=5, now you are the proud owner of a new gift. It sounds dumb, but we actually tried to help you – just not very well. My 23 years with the PO says you could pack better, pay for the better service levels, document the insurance claims to death, or get a heck of a story out of it. We’re only (sub)human! Happy Holidaze.