Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for June 07, 2023

Most of the Amazon parcels we see have an oversized box, a woefully undersized strip of air cushions and whatever you bought bouncing around in all the empty space

I love to pop those air bags! 8^ D

Damage to the product is more than the cost of packing material?

Air cushions for a potato peeler?

You don’t need a potato peeler, you just bake them.

Seems like the only thing I get that is in the right size package is my Red Line Club purchases from Hot Wheels.

Hey they stole my idea for wrapping Christmas presents. A little gift in a big box keeps them guessing!

In Belgium the postal services give penalties if you ship out parcel which do not have the right weight/size relationship. So a big box with only a potato peeler would cost the sender extra. This way they try to discourage using oversized boxes.

I worked for a few months in packing in a Fulfillment Center, so I can shed some light on this. I don’t work in singles packing, and some of that is completely automated anyway. For each order, the system suggests a box to put the order in, based on the dimensions of each item which is already known. That takes a lot of the guesswork out of the job, but when the system is wrong, it is very wrong. I had one order with bowls that clearly stacked into each other, but the system assumed the full dimension of each bowl. I hit “wrong box size” and selected a smaller box. Later, as my speed numbers started to go down, they told me to never move orders into a smaller box. I thought this company was supposed to be working to help the environment, but whatever.

There’s one person who consolidates orders into chutes, and one day this person got upset at me for canceling each order that was incomplete. He said that hurts his quality numbers. Well, if it’s his fault, perhaps he deserves to be hit for that. He convinced me to take each order to the problem solver to fix, but that killed my time, and I got marked down so much that I am on my final strike. I guess I’m not so worried about violating the social media policy and spilling too many secrets because it looks like they want me out of there anyway.

I once bought a “clamshell” cutter for opening those blasted hard sealed plastic packages… and I need a clamshell cutter to get the package it came in open…

Amazon over-sizes the boxes to help prevent them from getting lost. The only small boxes you’ll get from them are the ones they send through the post office.

the high environmental cost of shipping and handling.

Obviously not delivered by FedEx as the box wasn’t torn during delivery.

A tiny item is packed like it will explode if jostled. A large item like a crock for pickling had no packing at all and was shattered TWICE! Cancelled the order.

Then, guess who has to get of all the excess packaging? Right, YOU.

My recycle bin is usually full.

it’s in there, somewhere…

It is a dilemma, shop local or my save time and probably the environment- it has got to be less fuel, etc- sending it directly, cutting out the all those middle starts and stops and packaging and big store costs, land use, electricity, etc, etc. I know that means a lot of jobs lost and an interim of awful jobs at warehouses along the way [but that seems to be changing with automation and certainly will continue to change]. We are in a moment of transition and the disruptions are great- think of the buggy whip manufacturers that lost out to the car. Which is exactly the situation, new jobs – unfortunately not enough training or retraining of the workers. AND the unwillingness of all those of us who benefit by the ease of online ordering not being willing to pay a living wage to those facilitating that ease of shopping or the cost of education for those displaced- AND the ridiculous salaries paid to CEO’s pooling money that should go to the workers, that is where the ‘trickle down’ economy could start.

Amazon packaging is an ecological disaster.

Staples is even worse. My ink cartridges — which could be sent in a padded envelope — arrive in a box big enough for my winter shoes.

Where’s the smile?

A couple of days ago the nylon potato masher found its way down to the heating element of the dishwasher so yesterday I spent 1/2 the morning trying to find a new one. Is no one mashing their own potatoes anymore? I was beginning to think I would have to order it from Amazon before I finally found it at ACE hardware.

Did we need to know that?

That’s a potato peeler?

Wait. A Walmart or Kroger isn’t nearby? Do the Days live far out in the wilderness?

I’ve had shipments from Amazon like that.

Funny, in a sad way.  My brother and I were just talking about this very same thing last night.  I once ordered a twelve inch (0.3048 meter for you metric types) drafting ruler and it came in a box a little larger than a shoe box.  The only good thing, aside from it magically appearing at my door, was that it didn’t have any packing material in the box too.

My son ordered something from Amazon at 5pm Tuesday. It was delivered to our front porch at 8am Wednesday. How do they DO that??

I don’t get the white part and giant scissors ?

So what’s supposed to be funny in this strip?

Mr. Johnson really illustrated those air cushions with great skill. I’m partially mesmerized by them.

Had trouble today with the ads resizing gocomics. Clicked on the X and selected Covering Content as my complaint. Instantly solved that issue. Ads still change left and right but the page stopped being scrambled.