For Your Convenience, Package Delivered Not To You, But Halfway Across Town (PreOccupied Territory) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, August 28, 2025

For Your Convenience, Package Delivered Not To You, But Halfway Across Town (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, August 28 - The courier company tasked with getting the item you ordered into your possession announced today by text message and e-mail that, to improve your experience as a customer of the company from which you ordered that product, said product will be waiting for you at a pickup point that requires you either to walk for some time in the summer heat, or to spend additional money on transportation to get there to claim the order, instead of the hassle you might face by having the parcel dropped off at your home address, which you provided when you submitted the order.

HCC, the delivery company subcontracted to deliver the apparel that you ordered online two weeks ago, notified you this morning that the package is waiting for you at a refreshment shop and newsstand three neighborhoods over from yours, for you to collect at your convenience, provided that your convenience coincides with the establishment's operating hours, and tough luck if that forces you to take time off from your regular daytime commitments to collect it. This, the delivery company assured you in the same message, is to help you, as everyone knows the kind of trouble that occurs when a package gets delivered to the very address where you told the supplier you wanted it delivered.

"For your convenience, we have delivered your order to Hertzl's Makkolet, at 3 Yahalom Street," the notification read. The location necessitates a twenty-five-minute walk in the sun from your current location, or a twenty-two-minute journey by public transportation, which also requires waiting in the sun - there is no convenient parking in the area, and you do not own a car anyway.

The location differs form the pickup point for previous orders you submitted, albeit not from the same seller and not through the same website as this one. Those establishments, while also not your address, at least lie within normal walking distance, and in locations near those of errands you run with some frequency.

"Store hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, closed on weekends," the message also stated. This added convenience will require you to clock out of your job to collect the delivery, since you work from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Your lunch break, which gets automatically deducted as thirty minutes if you do not clock out for it, will not provide enough time to get to Hertzl's Makkolet, collect the package, and return to your desk.

HCC also stated in the message that it will soon introduce further improvements to its services for your convenience, which, you assume, will include socks delivered to separate locations, at separate times, when you order them as a pair.