They moved the sorting office!
May. 1st, 2015 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThey moved the sorting office! It rose delicately up onto its teeny tiny tootsies and scampered away to hide in an industrial estate behind the station. Or maybe it hummed and vibrated and sort flashed into a photographic negative and went "zingngng" and vanished and reappeared in a new spot. Or thousands and industrious citizens suddenly turned towards it and spontaneously rushed there, converging on it, donning hardhats and lab cots as they ran, and began dismantling it, labelling the parts and throwing them onto the mail trucks with joyful enthusiasm.
Or, maybe the site was conquered by Parcelforce partisans, skirmishing out of the neighbouring warehouses, and after months of tense running battles, the royal mail stalwarts broke, fleeing with what parcels they could save to recoup at the new site.
I have no idea which it was because I was, well, I had my head in the clouds and didn't notice. I've even cycled passed Henley Road and thought "yep, still there", and it didn't occur to me the sorting office wasn't still there.
And then, lo, I began thinking "these books fit through the letterbox, as do the sink plugs, and wallet ninjas, and various small household items, there's no reason to continue ordering them to work." And that worked, until one arrived that didn't fit, and the obliging postie, after following standard orders to throw it in the black bin, but then realising it was collected that day and maybe that was a bit infra dig even for the post office, turned to the green bin. And then, after a moment of guilt, parcel poised over the rotting compost, clinging terrified to the postie's hand, it was spared. And pausing only to give it a few regulation stamps (the kicking sort, not the licking sort) and hope that next time, it would learn to be narrower than the letter-box, it was reluctantly returned to the sorting office.
And little Jack, pootling home from work one day, find a little card saying "your parcel (probably books) was here, mere inches away from your devouring bibliovoric hunger maw of living room, but was taken away again. When would you like to see it again, on a scale between 'several days' and 'many days'?" I believe the "several days" may be the fault of communism and/or fertility rituals for preventing post delivery on Monday. Although they make up for it by getting people to walk round Milton Park in Starwars costumes!
I'm still a bit confused by the notation that the parcel is available for pick-up the next "working day" from the delivery office. "Working Day" is underlined. But seems to include Saturday? But you can't request redelivery until the working day after that which I guess is now, um, Tuesday? But anyway, blithly disregarding the difference between "Henley Road" and "Clifton Road" our endearingly pontificatory hero toddles bravely off with the note. "I'll go to work", he says, "and pick it up at lunchtime. The delivery office is really near, I remember that."
"In fact, it's REALLY convenient if I have a working bike and a reasonable rucksack (or car). Maybe I should make a habit of ordering things to home and then picking them up from the delivery office whenever it's convenient, if they don't happen to get delivered to home on Saturday." Our hero's little face shone with self-satisfaction, soon to be smashed to smithereens.
For what transpires is not, as hoped, "MOAR BOOKS", but rather, a forlorn looking disused warehouse with a sign saying "For demolition, dangerous, details, details" and nothing else. And lo, our hero was defeated, and decided going out into the sunshine had been a good idea, but maybe the actual book-getting part of the operation should be implemented by "asking the internet to deliver the book to home next Saturday instead", with no more moving his physical body about in public.
Here ends our tale (well, hopefully next Saturday). This story was brought to you by the magic of "nearly the bank holiday weekend, OBVIOUSLY work involves spending 1000s of words spodding about incidental administrative matters". But hey, you know, posting more stuff is good :)
Or, maybe the site was conquered by Parcelforce partisans, skirmishing out of the neighbouring warehouses, and after months of tense running battles, the royal mail stalwarts broke, fleeing with what parcels they could save to recoup at the new site.
I have no idea which it was because I was, well, I had my head in the clouds and didn't notice. I've even cycled passed Henley Road and thought "yep, still there", and it didn't occur to me the sorting office wasn't still there.
And then, lo, I began thinking "these books fit through the letterbox, as do the sink plugs, and wallet ninjas, and various small household items, there's no reason to continue ordering them to work." And that worked, until one arrived that didn't fit, and the obliging postie, after following standard orders to throw it in the black bin, but then realising it was collected that day and maybe that was a bit infra dig even for the post office, turned to the green bin. And then, after a moment of guilt, parcel poised over the rotting compost, clinging terrified to the postie's hand, it was spared. And pausing only to give it a few regulation stamps (the kicking sort, not the licking sort) and hope that next time, it would learn to be narrower than the letter-box, it was reluctantly returned to the sorting office.
And little Jack, pootling home from work one day, find a little card saying "your parcel (probably books) was here, mere inches away from your devouring bibliovoric hunger maw of living room, but was taken away again. When would you like to see it again, on a scale between 'several days' and 'many days'?" I believe the "several days" may be the fault of communism and/or fertility rituals for preventing post delivery on Monday. Although they make up for it by getting people to walk round Milton Park in Starwars costumes!
I'm still a bit confused by the notation that the parcel is available for pick-up the next "working day" from the delivery office. "Working Day" is underlined. But seems to include Saturday? But you can't request redelivery until the working day after that which I guess is now, um, Tuesday? But anyway, blithly disregarding the difference between "Henley Road" and "Clifton Road" our endearingly pontificatory hero toddles bravely off with the note. "I'll go to work", he says, "and pick it up at lunchtime. The delivery office is really near, I remember that."
"In fact, it's REALLY convenient if I have a working bike and a reasonable rucksack (or car). Maybe I should make a habit of ordering things to home and then picking them up from the delivery office whenever it's convenient, if they don't happen to get delivered to home on Saturday." Our hero's little face shone with self-satisfaction, soon to be smashed to smithereens.
For what transpires is not, as hoped, "MOAR BOOKS", but rather, a forlorn looking disused warehouse with a sign saying "For demolition, dangerous, details, details" and nothing else. And lo, our hero was defeated, and decided going out into the sunshine had been a good idea, but maybe the actual book-getting part of the operation should be implemented by "asking the internet to deliver the book to home next Saturday instead", with no more moving his physical body about in public.
Here ends our tale (well, hopefully next Saturday). This story was brought to you by the magic of "nearly the bank holiday weekend, OBVIOUSLY work involves spending 1000s of words spodding about incidental administrative matters". But hey, you know, posting more stuff is good :)