Fedex and UPS
First to our local (thank goodness!) UPS store. After checking my ID, the clerk found my package and brought it to the counter. Then they proceeded to scan three of the four barcodes on the surface of the package approximately thirty times. For some reason, the fourth was ignored. It took a minute, which sounds tiny... but in that situation is a very long time.
Think a one-minute delay in this situation is a hyper-quibble? Try it! Get ready to go somewhere and put the last thing you need to take with you on the table. Then set a 60-second timer and stand there, imagining someone cluelessly beeping and booping a handheld scanner at it every couple of seconds until the timer rings. Then, and only then, you can finally grab it and go.
With my mood thus primed, I was off to FedEx. There are three FedEx locations near us so of course our missed delivery was taken to the one 40 miles away, not the 12 or the 15. Why? It's how they divided up the city for no reason they were willing to explain. This location was an enormous warehouse only accessible to the public by ringing a security intercom in the parking lot, then going through a subway-style turnstile. This is not a mistake, this is where the sign in the parking lot directs the public.
When I entered the building, I would not have doubted if someone had told me that I had died and the obnoxious PK in my Senior English class was right -- I was in Hell. I got to spend twenty minutes, too, while the staff debated whether the remote location the driver called us to tell us it would be was the right one. Finally someone pedaled off on a tricycle with a basket to fetch my package.
So. Back to my original question: why do they hate us so?