The Rich are Rich for a Reason

 

The Rich are Rich for a Reason

©2021  Ross Williams

 

 

 

Like a growing number of people in today’s world of mandatory, government-imposed subsistence and poverty, our household is doing quite a lot for ourselves that most people, until very early last year, would get done professionally.  Like get our eggs, a lot of our meat, canned goods, our beer and wine and cheese.  Unlike most people, however, we’ve been doing it for years.  It’s because of the rest of you that we haven’t found any canning jar lids in over a year.  Thanks a lot, rookies.

 

We have chickens for our eggs and sheep for part of our meat, we put up gallons of tomatoes in all possible forms, and freeze a portion of our garden greens for later.  Last year we had so many apples that we ran out of recipes before we ran out of ingredients.  We’d gone cross-eyed trying to find different jelly and jam applications for the remaining bazillion apples.  Plain apple jelly is boring, and we’d gone through apple-mint jelly [we have a patch of mint as well], caramel apple jam, our family-favorite black apple jelly [apple juice and blackberry juice − we have blackberries, too], and an apple liqueur jelly [a failed experiment using a liquor cabinet alternative in place of the recipe-suggested brandy].

 

So the remaining apples were converted into alcohol.  I tried hard cidering some of it [another failed experiment] and apfelweining another portion of it [worked much better].  Since I‘ve made beer and wine for years it seemed a natural thing to do.  Shortly after I started this hobby, I asked my wife if she wanted to make cheese… the real way.  We’d done the vinegar curdled goat cheese a number of years ago.  It worked, but it wasn’t “real” cheese.

 

At any rate, our supplies of parts for these self-sufficiency exercises were getting low, and so on January 8^th [in the morning] I went online and ordered some malt extracts − gold and dark − for my brewery, and some rennet and cultures for my wife’s cheesery.  Stock items, all.  Just pull from the warehouse, box and ship.  January 8^th was a Friday.

 

Saturday the 9th I got an email from the beer supply folks that my shipment [two boxes, 40 pounds each] was at the shipper [UPS], and that I would receive an email from them with tracking information.  Within seconds, I received two emails from UPS, one per box, saying that they had my order, and they would be arriving the next Thursday, January 14^th.  I get my beer parts from Minneapolis.

 

It was late in the afternoon on the following Monday, January 11^th when I got an email from the cheese people saying that my package was being taken to the shipper [USPS].  I was also told that I’d be getting an email from them with tracking information.  It took from Friday morning, through Saturday, [Sunday off − okay, I guess I can understand], through almost the entire day Monday for them to get an interoffice email from the online order-taking department to the warehouse/shipping department to put three small stock items in a 3”x3”x3” box, with the order slip and a wad of padding, and take it to the post office.

 

On the morning of Monday the 11^th, UPS tracking showed my beer parts were leaving the UPS hub in Minnesota.  The cheese parts come from Massachusetts, roughly twice as far from me in suburban St Lose as Minneapolis is.

 

On Tuesday January 12^th, UPS tracking showed my beer parts were in the UPS hub in suburban Chicago.  Late in the afternoon on the 12^th, I finally got my tracking email from USPS, the US post office.  It had taken 23 hours to move from “we at the cheese parts supplier sent this to the post office” to “we at the post office got your cheese parts”.  I was given no estimated delivery date.  Later that day, it got sent to Stamford Connecticut, suburban New York City.

 

By Wednesday January 13^th, UPS had moved my two 40-pound boxes from the hub in suburban Chicago to their hub in suburban St Lose, while the feather-light box of animal rennet and cultures managed to make it from Stamford Connecticut a-a-all the way to White Plains New York − also suburban New York City.  A person can crawl from Stamford to White Plains faster than the USPS can move a tiny box.

 

On Thursday the 14^th, UPS tracking showed that my combined 80 pounds of barley syrups were being delivered that day, right on schedule.  On the other hand, and in a surprise move from the post office, the tiny box of cheese parts where the packaging weighed more than the contents finally managed to exit the vortex of suburban NYC and find its way to suburban Chicago.

 

Apparently all tuckered out from moving 3oz of contents in a 4oz box an entire third of the way across the continent the day before, it took a full 48 hours to get from the USPS facility in suburban Chicago to their USPS facility in St Lose MO.  It wasn’t until Friday the 15^th that USPS tracking showed that this package had made it to within 25 miles of my mailbox.  I was given an estimated delivery date of Saturday the 16th, “before 9PM”.

Nothing arrived on Saturday the 16^th, but just after 9PM USPS tracking informed me that the new estimated delivery was now Sunday the 17^th “before 9PM”.  Sunday the 17^th came and went with no cheese parts delivered and indeed USPS tracking erased all mention of expected deliveries and simply reverted to “we have your stuff in a warehouse.”

 

I was expecting nothing on Monday, the 18^th − a national holiday − however late in the day, USPS tracking showed this trivial little box had made it to the post office in my town.  The USPS apparently works on national holidays.  Two full days to move roughly 25 miles.  With two broken legs you could crawl it faster.

 

And then on Tuesday, the 19^th, it was finally delivered.

 

A number of things went wrong here.  The cheese people advertise this shipment method to be “2-10 day delivery”.  I ordered on the 8^th and got it on the 19^th.  That’s twelve days.  Now, one may wish to claim that the delivery was only 9 days, because it took three days to get the order out of their warehouse and into the grubby, unionized mitts of the USPS.  But that simply dodges the issue of why it takes three days to pick three stock items out of their warehouse and stuff it in a little box.  Even considering that one of these days was a presumably non-working Sunday, this is fairly inexcusable.  It could have − and should have − been to the post office by Friday afternoon.

 

Okay, sure, the cheese-parts outlet is a “family business” and maybe cousin Irene in shipping had an all-day root canal on Friday.  What’s the matter with Saturday?  I doubt they’re Jewish, and really doubt they’d be orthodox.  Even if they were, that leaves their Sundays open.  Even if a personal catastrophe hit the shipping department just as my online order came racing through the fiber optics on Friday, Monday morning to the post office, minimum.

 

The next major issue is why it took the post office nearly one-full day − 23 hours − to acknowledge receipt of a package, another day to shuffle between regional hubs in the same damned region, two full days to make the 4-5 hour drive from Chicago to St Lose, followed closely by why it took another two full days to make the 25 mile drive from St Lose to Edwardsville IL.  This last leg can’t claim to have been working around a national holiday; that was the day it seems to actually have travelled anywhere.  These are five to six days out of the 9-day travel time; there’s no reason it should have taken more than two days and change.

 

Online criticism of my beer parts supplier pings the place for being a division of the Big Brew giant Anheuser-Busch.  “Boo, hiss, commercial beer interests have no place in homebrewing!!”  If it’s true they’re owned by AB, then AB is simply capitalizing on a market niche they’ve driven off by manufacturing lousy, unimaginative, obscenely over-priced beer.  At least it shows foresight.  The fact that they provide timely service with efficient shipping contractors means I’ll continue to get my beer parts from them.

 

The cheese parts place, as a family business, is what I’d prefer to do business with, all things being equal.  But, as the timeline shows, all things are not equal.  Uninspired order fulfillment combines with the perennially inept and unionized indifference of the USPS parcel service to drive me, when shopping for future cheese parts, to Amazon.

Jeff Bezos doesn’t really need more money, but he sure as hell earns it.