Rick's b.log - 2020/09/16
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Amazon packet fail

Amazon packet, sealed by La Poste.

Upon removing the tape and opening the packet, the cause became clear:

The reason for the packet not being closed.

A piece of the horrid flimsy plastic baggie that they put books into got stuck to the sticky stuff that closes the packet.

I sent them an email to inform of this. I had to send them a message "Write to us in English" because all of the pre-filled out options were unsuitable. I didn't want a refund, the thing inside wasn't damaged, and all of the other possible excuses.

I made my complaint because this was just dumb. I would imagine some random robot slave employee got told off, but to be honest I would pin the blame for this on Amazon themselves.

Let me tell you a story. Several years ago, at work, we were making something that was... I think... guacamole and goats cheese. Maybe some other stuff, I wacheese sn't paying much attention as I stopped caring at the "goat's cheese" part.
Meanwhile, a different production was to be something like raspberry jelly and a layer of sweet white stuff that I think was sugar and mascarpone with a little merigue on top.

Can you guess where this story is going? Production was behind, everybody was in a hurry to get done that what needed done, and there were two near identical tubs of white stuff.
And... the person doing the goat's cheese line picked the wrong one and proceeded to dose out sweet mascarpone on top of the guacamole. And the girl doing the other line? She saw one tub and figured that was hers, and proceeded to dose goat's cheese on top of the raspberry stuff.
This meant both productions had to be tossed. The containers re-ordered (can't reuse them), and all of the stuff like the raspberry and avocado, re-ordered and prepared all over again.
And we're not talking a few dozen, we're talking something like ten to twenty thousand...of each.

Things are better now, everything carries a barcode for complete end-to-end traceability, however the point still stands - we are human, we make mistakes. Any process that concentrates purely on speed of throughput (as Amazon is notorious for, all that Time-on-Task stuff) is flawed. A little bit of time should be given to allow people to do things carefully and to check. But I guess in Amazon's mentality it is more "efficient" to simply push as hard as they can, and issue a refund for things that arrive broken.
Consider my Pantry order last summer. I made that order because I was here, at home, out in the wilderness. I had no car, no means of going anywhere, and my mother was in hospital. Because everything is to be dealt with at maximum speed, it was packed appallingly. As expected, a couple of things got broken. Two of them in a manner that meant they couldn't be used.
Amazon had no problem issuing a refund, but, you know, what is the point of a refund? That was supposed to be something that I'd eat.

I doubt this will change anything at Amazon, because Jeff has gotten insanely rich by offering what might be the world's simplest way of ordering massive amounts of stuff and gleefully obscuring who is actually selling things ... meaning it's a heaven for counterfeit knock-offs - I was looking at face masks last night and more than a few reviews for "Tom Tailor" commented that what actually arrived was a Chinese product that didn't even resemble the picture; including one that was advertised as pure cotton and made in France when it was actually made of some synthetic fibre (I forget what) and was not made in France. Okay, it's only a small sample, but it can be quite revealing to read the one star reviews.
Anyway, Jeff offers us a massive emporium of "stuff" that is easy to order, and for Prime subscribers, appears extremely quickly. It's just a shame that being the richest person in the world came at the cost of respect for employees and customers alike...

Stupid cyclist

Until we reached the hill. Felicity slows down on hills, but can (usually) keep up around the low forties. Which was more than the cyclist could manage. He started to drop behind, so I waited for a safe distance and pulled back over.

I heard a loud honk behind me, and figured that the driver back there was pretty annoyed by all of this. Turns out, he was, and amusingly he wasn't honking at me. I guess he had the passenger window down as he was clearly shouting out to the cyclist.
Good, I'm sure he said worse things than I'd know how to say. ☺

KKK

That plan got derailed by seeing three letters. Or rather, one letter three times. "KKK". Written on the little chalkboard that members of staff can use to leave messages.
I took a photo and emailed it to my boss with the message that I really hope this doesn't mean in French what it means in English.
Seeing her later, she described it as idiocy and asked me to remove it. Which I did gladly. I briefly considered writing "#BLM" in its place.

I showed the photo to one of the other green hats and she had no idea what it meant. I think she wasn't too sure about my description, she suggested that maybe in France it means something else. So she Googled it.

Her expression was all the answer that I needed. Which makes me wonder what person at work is happy to drop a subtle message relating to a bunch of racist American shitheads? It probably wasn't wiped on sight because most people would not have been aware of the significance of the message. I suppose it's like that "14/88" crap, it only makes sense when you know, and just looks like gibberish otherwise.
Which, I guess, is a pretty good definition of what a "dog whistle" is.

There was another odd symbol that appeared a few days earlier. I erased it at the same time, but I have no idea what it means. I looked for various "TK" logos but didn't find anything that resembled this.
I took a photo - does anybody know what this means?

A strange symbol.

Froggie

A frog in the plant pot.

Your comments:

David Pilling, 18th September 2020, 19:35

Ah the force grows in you - now you hate cyclists and start blogging blokey tales about their sins. Wouldn't you like a BMW, go on, you know you would.  Have to say as a pedestrian I hate cyclists - cyclist riding full tilt along the pavement is instant serious injury for us pedestrians.  Where am I going to get quoting the highway code at them. Fair enough they may be scared to go on the roads, but they do it in quiet streets too.    As to making stuff, make enough and eventually you will make an error - law of big numbers.    Yeah not clear on Amazon who is supplying stuff.

Rick, 18th September 2020, 22:27

I don't hate cyclists, I hate pretentious bastards.    I often go around two grannies on bikes (sadly without Bigouden headdresses, I'm disappointed!), but it's not worth mentioning as they cycle responsibly, I go around, leave lots of space, and nothing unusual.    That said, if a granny kept up with my car going flat out, that WOULD be worth talking about. I'd pull over and demand a photo!    Oh god no, I don't want a BMW, I don't even want to know how much tyres for such a thing would cost. Never mind other spare parts!    My ideal vehicle would be a small chunky 4x4. Capable of going across the field if the road is blocked by the harvester, and solid enough to offer reasonable protection against all the other twats on the road...

David Pilling, 18th September 2020, 22:32

The symbol looks like a Pi combined with a K - I had no look with Google image search. Which found me wall pictures and blackboard pictures. Text search wanted to tell me about pink. US Uni. style it might be Pi Kappa.

David Pilling, 18th September 2020, 22:37

Not every one likes being overtaken, cars will often speed up. I tend to touch the brakes as people go past, safer for both of us.  Slow overtaking manoeuvres have the potential to end badly, better to treat everything as a car, drop down to low gear and accelerate past them.  I've never seen someone on a bike keep up - but I'd want as with cars a 20mph advantage before starting to overtake.

David Pilling, 18th September 2020, 22:39

Yeah takes us back when people bought 4x4s because they were thought to be safer - along with "bull bars". Then they found out they were top heavy and needed skilled drivers. Frowned on these days due to the environmental impact.

Rob, 20th September 2020, 01:54

Stepped out of my gate yesterday and nearly got bowled over by a lad on one of those little electric scooters. I glared at him....    Some years back, one of the neighbours small children actually did get knocked over by a cyclist on the pavement out side our house. They ran off, police were called, but they couldn't do anything as although everybody knew who it was, they were a twin, and each lad said it was the other...