It events of that weekend started with a small mistake. My friend S and I have cars keys that look identical and she took mine as she was leaving to travel out of the country on a family emergency. Her own keys were in her bag. I was staying back at her house to take care of some unfinished chores S was in no shape to complete. When I got ready to leave, I and noticed my keys were missing. Called S, she was super apologetic and rushed to FedEx it to me over-nite on her way to the airport. That unplanned stop almost caused her to miss her flight.
On Friday night once S had boarded the plane and my tracking number showed that I would be re-united with my keys in the morning, it felt as if after a minor hiccup all was well. I was so wrong. The package was attempted to be delivered but for unknown reasons it was not and went back to the main FedEx station. Another friend gave me a ride and we hoped my car would not get towed - I was not planning on staying this long and did not have the visitor permit.
The FedEx location did have the package but they refused to give it to me because the package was not addressed to me - S had mailed to herself as it was being delivered to her house. Nothing illogical about it. S had arrived at her destination at this point and so I called. The agent explained to the both of us that she was following company policy and would be promptly fired from her job if she had the package to me when clearly the name and address on the mailing label did not match mine. The agent said the only thing to do was to ship it back to S and have her re-ship it proper name and address. This after I had explained the whole situation already. I was beside myself and started to lose it while other customers looked on.
I asked the agent about her complete lack of empathy no matter company policy - my friend needs to be supporting a bereaved parent in another country who we can hear sobbing in the background - we are on speaker phone. S has been authenticated as the person who shipped me the item, I can show the tracking number she sent me, I can tell them exactly what is inside the envelope. But nothing would move the agent's position. S had to spend an hour on the phone calling their main number and getting me to be the person authorized to pick up the envelope - it took several escalations before she found someone who understood the problem and had a reasonable way to resolve it.
As this drama unfolded, our other friend who had dropped me off had to leave as she had an appointment she could not miss and there I was stranded and feeling miserable that I could not give S time she so desperately needed. I was almost in tears and furious at the same time. We got things resolved and I got my keys, got an Uber and finally made it back. All told, this one mistake had costed us several hours of our collective time.
Once I had calmed down, I thought about serenity and how that may have prevented the calamity to begin with. When someone we care about is in the midst of a crisis, the best support we can offer is to help plan and organize, check and double check for mistakes, omissions and blind-spots. S was in no shape to think through what she was doing. My job was to provide the structure she lacked in her condition. I had failed her as a friend and compounded her troubles in a very fraught time. And that feeling of incompetence was expressed in the form of my upset with the FedEx agent. If she had to take action on every exception customers brought her way she would get nothing done in her entire shift.
While I was waiting there, there were three other folks who came up to this agent with asks that were beyond her ability to accommodate. In each instance the customer was asking for something outside the norm. One man for example wanted to know if he could pop some large piece of trash into their dumpster. He spent a good five minutes explaining why he should be allowed. This was right before I came with my problem. And I was not last either. I was complaining about the agent's lack of empathy when in fact I was hardly demonstrating any myself.
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