2001-08-08 - 11:57 p.m.

Leslie's Psychotic Episode

Another Wednesday, another trip to the UPS hub to pick up my new comics.

As I related a few days ago, last week I found out that we were going to lose the priv1lidge of picking up our boxes of comics 40 minutes early. This was the news we got last week from Leslie, the cranky UPS employee.

Bob, the other store owner, and I decided that we were going to show up at the same old time this week and try to get our boxes early again. After all, the worst they could do is just make us wait an extra 35 minutes - it seemed like a safe, no-lose way to play it.

I've found that if you act like you belong somewhere, people rarely question you. So, Bob and I just strolled into the hangar-like UPS warehouse and waited for a UPS employee to notice us.

Things did not look good. Usually from where we hang out we can see the carts with our boxes on them, but there was nothing that looked remotely like ours anywhere we could see.

Well, it looked like we would be back to waiting outside at 9 a.m. like the rest of the public.

After ten minutes or so Bob and I were about to go outside when a UPS employee hustled up to us. She apologized for being late, and said that she'd get our boxes together as quickly as she could. She seemed to be in her late 20s, rather short but very broad in the shoulders with an olive complexion and black hair.

She also proved to be very chatty. While she was lugging our boxes around she made the comment that she sure seemed to be working hard for someone who had quit two weeks ago. Apparently UPS was very short-handed today so they called her up and asked if she'd do another day and she'd said okay.

The woman told us that she had been only working at UPS for five years until she got "vested" (UPS stock options?) and then she quit.

"I don't plan on making hauling boxes my career," she said firmly.

Bob and I looked at each other warily. This friendly girl was a welcome change from sour, pinched Leslie. Moreover, she was acting as if last week never happened.

Finally, our curiosity got the better of us and we started quizzing her on what the deal was. To our astonishment she said that she was only temporary and that Olin would be back to help us out next week.

Leslie had said that Olin was retiring and we were never going to see him again. So we related to her the entire song-and-dance that Leslie had given us last week about how we weren't allowed in the building any more.

This annoyed the UPS girl, but her ire was not directed at us. "Leslie was just a fill-in person. She had no right to tell you those things."

This girl obviously didn't like Leslie much, and she wasn't alone in this assessment.

"She's a bitch," she told us. "Everyone hates her. UPS has been trying to get rid of her for years but they can't because of the union."

She then went on to say that the reason she was there helping us with our boxes instead of Leslie was that Leslie had some sort of a psychotic episode at work and had to go on leave, under a doctor's care.

I think at this point Bob and I were just standing there with our mouths open. So all of our worries about having to wait for our books again was just a delusion, cooked up by a crazy lady who'd forgotten to take her meds.

As we hauled our boxes out to our cars, it occurred to me that the stories that Leslie told Bob and me separately last week didn't really match, but it never would have occurred to me that she'd actually made them up. Good thing I didn’t get all irate and call up UPS - it would have only caused problems and might have actually got us banned from the building for real.

Things have been entirely too interesting at UPS the last couple of weeks. Hopefully the rest of the Summer will be nice and uneventful, so I won't have to bore you again with more Tales of Mis-delivery.