Thursday, November 29, 2012

In Which I Almost Let Down UPS...

"Oh," said the new-to-us UPS lady, when I answered the door, "I was told that..." her voice fell away, uncertain.

"They told you a child would answer the door?" I guessed.

"YES!" said she sort of leaning to peek over my shoulder into the house.

"The children are eating lunch right now and today, for the first time in months I've gotten to the door ahead of them." I explained with no small bit of pride.

Unimpressed and visibly disappointed, she handed me the electronic clip board and said, "I was hoping to meet Kate."

Baffled that she knew Kate's name and unused to signing for deliveries, I had taken hold of the clipboard in error and was attempting to sign the little window upside-down.

"Here," said the UPS lady, turning the gadget around in my hands, "you've got it wrong...Kate would have known that I bet."

"I'm sure she would have," said I chuckling and a little shocked that Kate seemed to be such a rock star down at the local UPS warehouse. Taking the package from her hands, I thanked the lady and promised to send Kate to the door to accept our next delivery.

Then, remembering all of the times the patient UPS delivery folks let Kate practice writing her four-letter name on their clipboards through the years as they delivered book after book to our home, I yelled for Kate...

"Kate, please lean out the front door and tell the new UPS lady that you are Kate and tell her to have a nice afternoon." With that, my child, who will not be lost in the crowd that is our family, whizzed past me, eager to make a new friend.  I stood watching out the window as the brown-clad lady outside grinned brightly and waved heartily at my famous-at-the-warehouse daughter.


Yep, I thought, that's logistics!

2 comments:

G'ma suz said...

Logistics: the management of the flow of resources between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet some requirements, for example meeting KATE!
I can just see the UPS employees smiling as they talk about that sweet one who lets sunshine out when the door is opened in greeting to the UPS folks. Love, Mom

Tiffany said...

So funny! We can always tell if there's a new UPS driver because the newbies can't swing that big truck around in the turn-around nearly as quickly as our regular guy! (I've seen/heard more than one hit the retaining wall...) The regular driver can whip it around in about 4 seconds--while talking on a cell phone or eating a sandwhich! :)

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