Once upon a time, post was delivered by a postman or postwoman. Over the past two centuries, this quaint initiative augmented a sense of community and invested early mornings with at least fleeting human contact. These days, decades after the slow demise of letter writing, a postman is now a rather recherché figure and, thanks to Royal Mail price hikes, a symbol of luxury, despite the downgrading of his once resplendent red and blue woollen frockcoat for a synthetic combo including all-weather shorts.
More and more, post – which we’re now encouraged to call ‘mail’ on the principle that all Americanisms are good – means the harvest of our online shopping and arrives (or doesn’t arrive, but that’s a whole different story) via a private delivery company that, within minutes of placing your order, has become your new penpal and an over-attentive and hectoring presence in lives already frazzled. No postman that I’m aware of ever felt the need to warn you repeatedly that he’d be back tomorrow with more of the same. By contrast the new brand of delivery company frequently appears to put far more effort into the build-up than the act itself.
‘Your parcel has been despatched.’ ‘A parcel is on its way to you.’ ‘We’re expecting your parcel.’ ‘We have your parcel!’ ‘Your parcel is out for delivery.’ ‘Your parcel will be delivered today.’ This communication is by email, text or both so that, wherever you are, as long as you have your phone, there’s no escape. Fingers as dexterous as a concert harpist’s are needed to maintain the requisite speed on the delete button if there’s any hope at all of keeping your inbox moderately free of unread messages. It’s all part of the service, so smile and be grateful as your time is pointlessly frittered.
And perhaps this is the point. Somewhere along the line, some hapless graduate of a customer services degree has decided that the parcel company that communicates with maximum unrelenting officiousness is the company you’ll choose again – even though you didn’t choose it in the first place, but had it allocated to you by invisible gremlins in the nano-seconds after you pressed ‘Submit order’.
‘Your parcel has been delivered.’ Why are we told this? In my experience, it actually means ‘Your parcel is in a hedge/in the recycling/in a puddle in the woodshed’
It’s a consequence of a marketing mindset in which less is never more and the company responsible for delivering the non-alcoholic gin your supermarket doesn’t stock will allay your own portion of cosmic anxiety by bombarding you with ‘reassurances’. Even if reassurances of this sort aren’t what you want. You want a life in which clicking ‘Buy’ inevitably generates the item chosen. The product is the point. How it gets to you is about as interesting as the terms and conditions that you won’t have time to read because you’re too busy fending off messages announcing you have other deliveries pending, or, even worse, inviting you to track your delivery, a process that, presumably, is an attempt by the entertainment division of Evri to go head-to-head with TV streaming services.
And, of course, it doesn’t end there. If delivery is successful… there’s another message: ‘Your parcel has been delivered.’ Why are we told this? In my experience, it’s actually a nasty joke, sent after ignoring your ‘safe space’ instructions. ‘Your parcel is in a hedge/in the recycling/in a puddle in the woodshed’ is what it means. By now you’re so battered by this unsolicited monologue that you’ll settle for almost anything. When round three kicks off with a new set of messages – ‘Rate your delivery’, or the foolishly naive ‘How did we do?’ – you’re too weak to protest.
I suspect there’s a silver lining. Delivery companies may turn out to be the high street’s saviour. Imagine a shop in which you choose, pay and leave with the goods. Admittedly you’re forced to pay for parking using an app of mind-blowing obduracy that only works if you stand absolutely still in the one corner of the car park with perfect 4G, but at least there’s an end to the process. So this Christmas, I’m going old school. No more courier companies. No more ‘progress’ reports from invisible busybodies. I’m off to the shops.
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