the never ending... emails.
I am waiting for the delivery of a recent online purchase. Not waiting, pacing up and down and occasionally pulling the curtains back to see if if the van has pulled up in the drive yet, just waiting as in 'I ordered something but it hasn't arrived yet'.
The parcel? A pencil. It's just a pencil. Singular. It is a mechanical pencil, so a bit fancier than your average supermarket own-brand wooden HB, but not by much.
Why did I order a pencil online in the first place when you can buy pencils quite happily in the shops for pennies anyway?
Well, this is a particular brand and type that I don't know is even carried by the one stationery shop I can think of within about a 20 mile radius of me. It would probably be trivial to pick one up in such a stationery shop, or even the large supermarkets in a bigger town or city, but I live an hour drive from the nearest biggish city, and at least half an hour from the nearest small town.
And you may or may not know this, but I don't venture out of my shack in the rural wilds to drive to small or large towns, let alone whole cities. That's where there are other people, and I don't like other people.
You're alright, obviously. It's just everyone else I don't like. (This is a bit of exaggeration and deflection, it's me having to deal with other people that is the problem really.)
Anyway, getting stuff from online stores delivered is easier for me, mentally and physically.
But the emails generated by a simple online order nowadays? Well.
So far, there have been seven different emails about it, and the order probably hasn't even been seen by the sellers yet. Saturday I ordered, seven emails by the end of Sunday, and I bet the outlet staff won't even see the order is there to be processed until Monday.
I posted on my fediverse account..
UPDATE:
Tonight (it's now Monday night—it takes this long to complete a post) I received the eighth email. This was to tell me that the order had been dispatched.
This is similar to the last email I received, telling me the instructions to deliver the parcel had been received by the company doing the delivery, but this time very slightly and subtlety different.
This time they were confirming they had the actual physical parcel, made up of atoms of matter already assembled in a form to actually be my pencil, in a parcel of some sort (this part was not actually in the email, but I assume it to be the case), and they were now in the process of doing whatever it is they actually do to get it to me (throwing it into the back of a truck with other 'deep dark Cornwall' addressed parcels and away down the motorway overnight to get it a little bit closer to me).
Progress indeed. And I am to be kept informed every step of the way, apparently.
Well, I hope not every step. That would be silly, even for modern 'keep the customer informed (because we can)' systems.
"We are pleased to inform you that your parcel is now in the back of Kevin's van!"
"We are pleased to inform you that Kevin's van has successfully started and has now left the depot with your parcel on board!"
"We are pleased to inform you that you may track the movements of Kevin via this number. No, not those sort of movements, we mean you can track his van!"
Who knows how many emails I'll get that I'll need to put straight into my email trash (the emails make a similar journey to the physical junk mail... arrive, picked up, chucked in recycle bin - not even opened most of the time).
Inevitably, having posted about modern information systems contributing to information overload of primitive ape brains like mine by a deluge of information (too much 'information' in one sentence? Yep, a subtle joke there), then of course there was a fedi user replying with:
I appreciate the e-mails telling me my order was received, payment made, order shipped, and order tracking information. We have an Amazon Hub for packages used by Amazon, UPS, etc. to prevent package theft. I don't like knock & drop delivery because it leaves packages visible. JMO
I have no idea what the JMO at the end means. However, I can work out that the first three emails this person mentions are not actually needed for the purposes of knowing the parcel is NOW ready to collect at the hub. Even they only really appreciate the necessary emails.
Too many emails. I don't need to know so much. Nor do you.
Thank you.
PS: five minutes after the parcel has been delivered ("We are pleased to inform you that your parcel has now been delivered." I KNOW! I AM HOLDING THE FUCKING THING!), I will start receiving emails imploring me to review the product.
I posted a template text that I think would be appropriate for everyone hacked off by the emails asking them to review perfectly mundane products they received by online shopping to use.
"I am doing this review in an effort to stop the endless fucking emails this company sends about doing reviews."
Fight the system by flooding the system with unprintable reviews!
Written by a real person who completely ignores red wavy underlining and uses perfectly legitimate brand new words that just haven't made it to a dictionary yet.
Post Link: https://skryblans.com/the-never-ending-emails
↓ There is a star to click down here, if you have been fully trained by modern social media to click stars mindlessly whenever you see them.
I have been similarly fully trained to receive them gratefully.