This past Christmas, I ordered a pogo stick from Amazon for my nephew. It arrived in a box suitable for a 60-inch flatscreen TV, as shown in this TERRIBLE photo:

No big deal. I thought it was kind of funny. I actually cut down the box and made three more boxes for gift wrapping because I’M CHEAP.

It turns out that oddball shipping like this is pretty common, as evidenced by pics like these:

According to the confessions of a shipping guy as told by The Consumerist, “…there is actually a perfectly legitimate reason why that SD card got put into a box that could accommodate a pair of winter boots.”

Basically, it comes down to money, regulations, and productivity measurements. For instance, you’d think they could send the gift card in a mailer envelope. But bubble envelopes are expensive, and they go straight into the landfill if you don’t separate the bubbles from the paper, which we all have time to do, right? Didn’t think so. And landfill equals regulatory hassle!

As for the BIG boxes, they do their best to keep as few sizes of box in stock, to save on inventory costs. Or, they may have the right size of box but, during peak times, they just run out of them. At any rate, making all these boxing decisions when they are trying to ship 35,000 items a day really slows them down, and they get dinged by the head office for poor output.

In other words, RELAX ABOUT THE SHIPPING. There, I feel better. Check out the original piece for many more examples and the reasons behind the madness. And have a great weekend!

PS… Can you believe this is our 200th blog post? It doesn’t feel a day over 195!