Damaged In Transit: Unsolved Mystery

There are a few things in life you can absolutely, without question, completely and totally rely on. Fed Ex mailing tubes top the list. No matter what you roll up and stuff inside them, you can be certain they’re going to hold their shape, keep their contents safe, and basically fulfill all the expectations the shipper had in mind. I’ve seen hundreds of them come in and out of the receiving dock over the past nearly eight years and they all look the same: Like giant generic cigarettes, safely shielding their contents from any hazards of air travel. Maybe you might have to worry, once or twice, about bubble mailers. Occasionally you might worry about the standard Fed Ex box, but never about a Fed Ex tube. I’m convinced they could replace rebar in commercial construction. That’s why I’m not quite believing I spent the majority of my work day as I did, beginning with a call this morning from the receiving dock.

“Hi, Madeleine, this is Josh in receiving. I just wanted you to know, we received a shipment for your client next week, and one of four was really damaged.”

“How damaged?”

“Well,” he said, and there was a slight pause, “it looks like a giant cigarette that somebody tried to crush out.”

“I’m on my way down to take a look, thanks.”

Before I could get my keys in hand, the call came from the client, who had received an email from Fed Ex notifying her that one of four was ‘damaged in transit’. When I described to her the condition which had just been described to me, there was a pause on her end followed by a more-than-a-little anguished shriek of, “No!” more appropriate, really, to someone witnessing a train wreck.

“Oh my god,” she said. “That’s critical to Monday’s presentation. If it’s ruined we have a big problem. Would you mind—is there any way—you could take a picture and email it to me?”

“Absolutely,” I assured her. “I’m on my way down now. I’ll send it to you.”

In about six minutes which felt like thirty minutes later (our receiving dock is basically three floors below my office, accessible through a maze of elevators and back hallways nobody truly understands except those who work here) I was in the box room and Josh was at the door. He shook his head when he saw me. “It’s pretty bad.”

Bad was an understatement.

When he retrieved it from it’s shelf in the back and held it out, all I could think was how accurate his initial description had been. It truly did look as if the Jolly Green Giant had lit a smoke, taken one drag, then crushed it angrily out and returned to planting green beans, which were much healthier. It was bent in five places, twisted in two places, and had dents and creases through everything else.

“What the hell?” Not an appropriate response by HR standards, but the only thing I could seem to get out. Unbelievable. I’d never seen anything like it.

We laid it on a table and I took a few pictures.

“Let’s keep it here,” I said, heading back to my computer to email the pictures to my client. “I’ll let you know what they decide.”

What they decided, after reviewing the two pictures I’d sent, was that as the contents were vinyl-based banners, the damage might be minimal enough that they would be serviceable on Monday. That decision held for about an hour, when another call arrived, this one asking if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, would I open the tube and take some photos of the banners, give them some idea of the banners’ condition? Six or thirty minutes later, I was back in the box room, retrieved the mangled tube, took it to the receiving office, and announced to Josh, “We need to cut it open,” feeling like a medical technician about to participate in an autopsy.

As it turned out, cutting a body open might have been easier. Scissors wouldn’t work. A Gerber failed miserably. It was only when Josh resorted to a box cutter that he made enough progress to work part of the mangled top loose, and then wrestle the whole thing apart like a badly abused tube of Pop and Fresh Dough and darned near working up a sweat in the process. Once he pulled it away, the banners retained the grisly shape of the container they’d been brutalized in.

Photo number one.

He unrolled them on the floor and we could immediately see the dents, dings, deep creases and wrinkles that rendered what had once been beautiful banners proudly honoring a major airline into useless, giant sized placemats not suitable for anything.

Photos two through five.

Those sent off to the client, I waited for a response, then decided to be a bit more proactive and contact Fed Ex myself, trying to get some explanation of what, exactly, had happened to this shipment. They were very helpful and very forthcoming in quickly informing me the tube had been “damaged in transit.”

“I understand that,” I said politely. “I’m just trying to understand exactly how.” I didn’t tell them this, but actually I wanted to know not only on my client’s behalf but on my own. I couldn’t imagine anything with the kind of power you’d need to have to make a Fed Ex tube look like this one did. They were sympathetic to my inquiry and gave a full and detailed explanation consisting simply of repeating, “It was damaged in transit.”

Well, Ok then. Thank you, customer service.

The call from the client came through a few minutes later. It was bad, they said, but they’d look at it again on arrival Monday. I assured them I’d be happy to take them to the Receiving office to take a look, and called Josh to give him the update.

“I know it’s not our fault,” I told him, “but I feel bad. I wish there was something we could do. Maybe iron them, or—“

“Madeleine, they’re vinyl,” he said, “we can’t iron them.”

Oh. Well, so much for problem solving today.

“I’d just like to know what the hell happened to them,” Josh said and I felt somewhat better that I wasn’t the only one in blatant violation of HR’s policy against the “H” word that day.

“Fed Ex said they were damaged in transit,” I explained, and he laughed.

“Like how? Did they roll the plane over it once or twice before take off? Maybe toss it into an engine for a minute?”

Either one seemed a plausible explanation, and we both agreed, we’d never seen anything like it. Which in and of itself made it notable because if you work in this industry long enough, you pretty much see everything. We’d do anything we could for the client on Monday. There wasn’t much more we could do today.

The matter put to rest, more or less, it still bothers me. Maybe because, as I said, there are a few things in life you can absolutely count on—or at least you think you can, until you find out you can’t. When you make the realization that you can’t, it’s never an easy thing. Fixed ideas can be hard to let go of and although we start the process in childhood (letting go of the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and in one particular instance from my own childhood, The Money Tree because I always thought there was one, my mom’s standard response to a request for anything new being, “It depends on if your dad can shake the money tree hard enough”) and it’s a bit easier to let go in adulthood but still, you wind up feeling let down.

I’d never look at a Fed Ex tube the same way again, never with the full confidence that it was what it was.

I remained equally bothered in my failure to get an actual explanation for how it met its demise. This, I know, will stick with me much longer than the disappointment of discovering its fallibility. I think Josh was right, and they backed the plane over it once or twice, and I’m so convinced of this, I’m taking a Fed Ex tube home with me tonight. Before I pull into my carport, I’m laying that thing down and I’m driving over it and backing up on it at least twice.
My car’s no 737 but it’s not a compact, either. If I can do some damage, I’ll feel somewhat better.

If I can’t, I’m probably going to have more trouble sleeping than I should.