Nic Narrates

Toolbag Wednesday #8: Hodgkins, IL

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

I love to shop online. If it exists, someone is invariably already selling it online. And I love to bargain shop online too. Not so much eBay as a quick search on Google’s “shopping.” And despite gas prices, I can pretty much count on getting free shipping in addition to avoiding sales tax from my favorite sites.

But it’s not a completely perfect means to satiating my need for instant gratification, my need for those Me Too black skimmers from zappos to get here this second. Oh no. Not if that coveted treasure is being shipped UPS to Chicago.

See, there’s this jacked up place called Hodgkins, IL. Hodgkins is the blackhole of shipping and handling. It is the time suck on UPS efficiency. It is the blue balls of online package tracking (no pun intended…okay maybe).

Packages that would otherwise arrive in the estimated 3-5 day window wind up spending a whole day carousing in your slutty clutches. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Even if the package originates in, say, Forest Park, IL as was the most recent case. That package- my Amazon order for Sedaris’ new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Emily Giffin’s Love the One You’re With- did its time there and has finally arrived a week later.

Oh Hodgkins, how I detest your unavoidable delay, your hub status as the “largest package sorting center in the world.” You most certainly are the Toolbag today. You dirty, dirty tease.