Thursday, July 31, 2025
Surrealism is where you find it
For reasons, we had a package that needed to be sent via UPS. All I had to do was drop it off at the local UPS store around the corner from Chez Boca.
I arrive. Adorning the windows of the establishment in the strip mall were Federal Express banners; nothing at all about the store said “UPS” to me. I double checked Google Maps and it said this was a UPS location. I entered the store.
It was small. The counter was cluttered with tons of paper, an obvious scale and a computer terminal. Buried in the clutter was a desk bell. I tapped the top, it rang out with its distinctive bell sound.
No one answered.
Off to my left was an open doorway, through which I could see a fancy high-backed chair, the type of which one might find at Versailles. I walked through the doorway to find a section of the store under heavy construction. I have no idea why a fancy French-style chair was in the room though. Did the foreman of the construction crew use it to sit there and bark orders when they were there?
I walked back to the cluttered desk, rang the desk bell a few times and called out “Hello?”
Still no answer.
Puzzled, I maybe thought the employees were all in the back of the store and couldn't hear me or the bell. There was a door behind the desk that was partially open, so I walked over to it and took a peek through the door way, still calling out “Hello?”
Through the partially open door I saw a large stuffed chair which for some reason registered as a dentists' chair even though it wasn't one, was just sitting there in the middle of a hallway, facing the the wall. Beyond it was a T-intersection with another hallway. I wonder what's with the chairs? I asked myself.
Still no answer, either for the rhetorical question about the chair situation, nor from any employee at the supposed UPS store.
I called out “Hello?” yet again.
“Hello!” said a voice.
It took me a few seconds to realize the voice was coming from behind me, and when I tured, I saw an employee walking in through the front door. “I'm sorry, I was out checking in a U-Haul truck,” she said. We passed each other, she walking behind the cluttered desk, and me waling from behind the cluttered desk.
“Do you handle UPS here?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Here you go,” I said, handing her the package.
She took it, slapped it on the scale and scanned the packing label on it. “That's funny,” she said, “it's saying it's already been dropped off.”
“That's a good trick,” I said. “It was originally dropped off at our house, and now we need to send it back.”
She kept working at the computer terminal, puzzled at first, then a look of clarity crossed her face. “Ah, normally this would be picked up by a UPS driver. It's all good now.” And with that, she handed me a receipt.
In all my excitement over handing off the package, I forgot to ask about the chairs. Darn it all.
