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I'm the shipping manager for our company (by which, I mean that I actually do all of the shipping, from boxing, to entering the orders on FedEx/UPS/USPS, to dealing with the respective drivers).
Today, I've essentially been asked to be psychic, and come up with the ability to bend space. It started with a simple conversation about ordering more boxes, and especially ordering some double-walled boxes for larger items. The guy who is addressing me about it - let's call him Mick - is one of the company's chief buyers. He buys large lots of items at customs auctions and other sources, brings them back to the company, and others go through the lots to determine what can be sold in which venues, and what's crap. Mick's main area of expertise is optics - microscopes, laser arrays, and other things that use lenses. What he buys tend to be large and heavy.
No problem so far. But now he wants me to go through a long list of box sizes, and pick out the sizes I'll need to ship his items. I don't know what items he plans to buy - he knows that far better than I do, but he wants to push that job onto me.
More than that, though, he's talking about buying a WIDE range of sizes, rather than a smaller selection of utilitarian sizes. He wants to get boxes that more closely fit his things, so that there's less room in packaging. Which involves more logistics in storing and record-keeping, which he's willing to hand-wave away as unimportant (because he won't be the one keeping track of them!).
Moreover, he has an unrealistic idea of what kind of space we're talking about. He wants to order potentially hundreds of boxes (10 each from a wide selection), and store them under a desk in my department. A space that has room for maybe 10-20 double-walled boxes.
And I'm the unreasonable one for objecting to all of this.
Today, I've essentially been asked to be psychic, and come up with the ability to bend space. It started with a simple conversation about ordering more boxes, and especially ordering some double-walled boxes for larger items. The guy who is addressing me about it - let's call him Mick - is one of the company's chief buyers. He buys large lots of items at customs auctions and other sources, brings them back to the company, and others go through the lots to determine what can be sold in which venues, and what's crap. Mick's main area of expertise is optics - microscopes, laser arrays, and other things that use lenses. What he buys tend to be large and heavy.
No problem so far. But now he wants me to go through a long list of box sizes, and pick out the sizes I'll need to ship his items. I don't know what items he plans to buy - he knows that far better than I do, but he wants to push that job onto me.
More than that, though, he's talking about buying a WIDE range of sizes, rather than a smaller selection of utilitarian sizes. He wants to get boxes that more closely fit his things, so that there's less room in packaging. Which involves more logistics in storing and record-keeping, which he's willing to hand-wave away as unimportant (because he won't be the one keeping track of them!).
Moreover, he has an unrealistic idea of what kind of space we're talking about. He wants to order potentially hundreds of boxes (10 each from a wide selection), and store them under a desk in my department. A space that has room for maybe 10-20 double-walled boxes.
And I'm the unreasonable one for objecting to all of this.
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