Well. Supposedly.
We've been having minor problems with this courier company for a while now - deliveries being late, new delivery guys being unable to find the store, etc. When they screw up, we have to call our warehouse guy at head office. Warehouse guy is called Mark.
Also, this got LOOONG.
IT BEGINS
So, week before last, we get notification from head office that a new range in coming into store, along with instructions on how to merch it, right in the front window. The delivery is due Tuesday, and head office pays extra to ensure that the delivery arrives instore before 10am. So extra staff are rostered on to unpack and set up the display, and we spend Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning clearing out the display cases and moving a LOT of stock around. We also roster on a couple of extra staff to deal with the delivery and merching without comprimising customer service.
Tuesday 10am comes and goes, no delivery. We call Mark. He says he'll look into it. Calls us back 30 minutes later, the courier company swears it will be there by 12. Extra staff are hanging out, dusting stuff.
12 comes and goes. No delivery. Call Mark. The delivery will certainly be there within the hour.
2pm. No delivery. Extra staff shifts have started finishing. Front window is completely bare. Call Mark. It will definitely be there by close of business, guys.
5pm. Call Mark. he sounds like he's about to cry. Soothe Mark, call regional manager. She gets all mad and flustered and swears a bit.
5:45pm. Having closed the store, we receive a call from Mark. No longer tearful, he sounds hopping mad. Courier company has mistakenly sent our shipment to Brisbane. Half-hysterical laughter ensues. Delivery will, they promise, be overnighted to us, to arrive by lunchtime Wednesday.
THE PLOT THICKENS
Wed. morning we receive instructions from our merchandise manager to fill the front display with a certain product. We are puzzled, as we have not received this product.
Call Mark.
That delivery... left warehouse, never reached us. Over a week ago. Very mysterious. Courier company promises to locate and immediately delivery it.
Midday, 1pm, 2pm. We receive our other delivery - from a different, far more reliable company - unpack and shelve all stock. Missing delivery nowhere to be seen. To change it up some, we email Mark. (I'm having trouble with how tremulously weepy he sounds when he hears from us.)
He emails back - the courier company promises most solemnly, it's on its way, it'll be there soon!
Yeah, no.
THINGS APPROACH FARCICAL
Thursday morning. We open the store and stare dolefully at our still-empty front window display. It's minimalist, opines my manager. It's striking, I reply.
We boot up the computers to find a very carefully-worded email from Mark. The delivery, it appears, has been overnighted... back to warehouse. Along with our mysteriously missing delivery from the week prior. Both of which are being sent back to us, again. Manager and I blink at one another in befuddlement.
Another delivery - not the missing one - arrives. We quiz the driver about our missing delivery, but he blusters and scuttles away.
The courier company calls us directly! Hooray! Terribly sorry, etc, the delivery will ABSOLUTELY be there first thing tomorrow. Pinky-swear.
Friday, I am working the late shift, and sail into work at around 3pm to find a suspicious lack of boxes. I make eye contact with my manager. Her eyebrows are very frustrated today. I check the store emails to find a moderately hilarious email chain from head office, regional mananger, warehouse, the courier company, our merchaniser, and the company owner about the "situation". No accord has been reached.
Mysteriously, the missing delivery from the previous week has shown up. The front display is marginally less bare.
5pm, we get a call from our regional manager. They have the delivery in our city, on a truck, ready to go. It can be there by 7pm. So we'll have thirty giant boxes cluttering up the store, no time to unpack on a Saturday four weeks til Christmas, I don't think so. She agrees to have them hold the delivery until Monday. It will be delivered by Monday, 10am, I swear on the blood of my ancestors.
Monday monring, a delivery! Happy day! We get the connote and email Mark the confirmation. He emails back "Yes, that's delivery we sent you Thursday last. Let me know when you get the missing one from Wednesday."
Guess what.
So we call Mark that afternoon - about this time, we start looking at one another whenever something happens and going "Poor Mark" - and he sounds totally defeated and says he'll call the courier company. Ten minutes later, he calls back and says that the courier company says the delivery has been made and signed for.
We double check all the boxes. They are all in the same shipment lot, all picked up for delivery the Thursday previous, ie, after our missing delivery was already supposed to be on the shelves. My manager calls Mark back while I make a note to send him cookies or something.
By the time the courier company straightens out their godawful mess (You mean, two seperate deliviries to the same store on the same day? Impossible! Quelle horreur!) it's closing time. I offer to hang back a while and see if they show up, but my manager points out that if they're dumb enough to show up outside of business hours, they deserve the inconvenience.
Delivery finally shows up, six days late... Tuesday morning. Awesome
So that happened.
YOU TOTALLY THOUGHT THAT WAS THE END RIGHT
No. Oh no.
So, for the rest of the week, we get crappy service from this courier company. Like, deliveries consistently late (Our company pays through the nose to get deliveries to us by 10am, and that week they arrived, consistently, between 1pm-2pm, middle of the lunch rush) boxes really roughed up, delivery guy was rude to our customers and interrupted our transactions with our customers. We spent the week on and off the phone to Mark, but all the problems were sorted out, if grudgingly, within a day.
Saturday morning, delivery guys showed up with - I believe - forty boxes. Two points.
1. Forty boxes of the size we get stock in is enough to build a fort you could live in comfortably. That is a significant delivery.
2. We NEVER get deliveries on a Saturday. It is our busiest trading day. Company policy is ALL deliveries unpacked and out of sight by COB Friday because we literally do not have space for Saturday customer traffic + any boxes.
Now, I didn't work Saurday, but I'm told my manager told the guy she wouldn't take the delivery, and to take it back to warehouse and come back on Monday, but he'd already unloaded half of it while she was helping a customer and flat-out refused to take it back and it was way too busy for her to stand around and have an argument with him. So it got shoved in coreners and under tables and in the back room, to be dealt with after the weekend.
Manager did call Mark, but it was a Saturday! He was out of the office! She sent him an email instead.
Monday morning, Mark calls. He is clearly as confused as we are, and promises to look into it.
Our Monday delivery fails to arrive, so we assume that it was mistakenly delivered on Saturday instead of being held over the weekend as requested. Mark, after conferring with the courier company, agrees. He has written the whole mess up for the head of company so she can shout at them, which she enjoys. He lets us know that on Tuesday (today, dear readers!) we can expect twenty-two boxes, including another new range.
SO THEN I WAS LIKE COOL STORY BRO
Tuesday morning, the courier shows up before the store opens - which they are not supposed to do - with three boxes and wonky-wheeled trolley with a connote dated March this year.
Call Mark. Confusion abounds. Is this delivery from our abortive Saturday-supposed-to-be-Monday delivery? Is this our Tuesday delivery? Is it another thing entirely? We don't know! Madness rules! The laws of time and space, they have no meaning! The situation is poised to devolve into monkey dances and weeping, and nobody wants that, so Mark girds his loins and makes an executive decision. This is not your Tuesday delivery, he announces. Your Tuesday delivery is different and has not arrived yet. We all cheer. Thanks, Mark!
Around 1pm, Mark calls us. Did we get our delivery yet? Nope. But the courier company said it's been delivered! Only those three boxes-wonky-trolley this morning. But they're swearing that it's been signed for and everything, all twenty-four boxes! Sorry Mark. Not here.
It's busy into the leadup to Christmas, obviously, and our budgets are sitting at something 3x what they would be the rest of the year. Even with the extra staff (supposedly to deal with the still-not-arrived delivery) we are rushed off our feet. Right in the middle of the lunch rush, a wild delivery appears! I email Mark to let him know, promising confirmation once it's all here. And in between serving cutomers, I watch as the guy - same guy as that morning - brings it in. One box. Slowly. Two boxes. One more. Slooooowly. And another... And eventually he makes his way over to me to sign the delivery confirmation.
Now, I admit that by this point I was pretty damn fed up! Also, we're supposed to count the boxes int he delivery. So I did that, and we only had twelve.
"There's some missing," I say, and he shakes his head and counts.
"No, twelve," he says. "And four this morning."
I glare and scowl and generally try to be as intimidating as a five-foot-nothing girl a pink apron can be. "Excuse me, we are expecting twenty-four boxes," I say. "Also, why didn't you bring the whole lot in this morning, like you were supposed to? Hm? This delivery is supposed to be here by ten am. ALL of it. And some is still missing. Where is the rest of our delivery. WHERE."
"Seperate trucks," he says. "They were all seperate deliveries, seperate trucks. Couldn't do it."
"That is UNTRUE," I squawk, because our warehouse picks and sends deliveries in bundles under a single connote. "You told your office that it had all been delivered, I just talked to them! Where is the rest of it."
He shrugs. "Be here tomorrow." He proffers the delivery conformation note. "Sign please."
Oh fuck no.
"You wait here," I snap, and go to fetch my manager. The scary one.
At this juncture I am called away to serve a customer, and thus missed what I am sure was an epic smackdown of some description, though I did catch the tail end of something that sounded like "... weeks LYING to us..." and then the delivery guy lit out of there like his tail was on fire.
Manager stomps to the computer and emails Mark, Mark's boss, regional manager, national manager, and company owner.
Ten minutes later we are CC'd on an email from company owner to the courier company, calmly informing them that we are very disappointed, and that they will fulfill their obligations from this point onward without fail, or else be expected have a third-party courier on standby to do so, at their cost.
THE END
Holy shit, that was long, that was really, really long. If you read that whole thing... sorry.
Can you ship cookies through the mail? I hope so. Poor Mark.
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