the secret lives of UPS drivers

I’ve been told that the local Petco parking lot is the best place to make the exchange, but only at the appointed hour. As the target time approaches, I’m ready, equipped and eager to just get it over. And also stuck in traffic, clogged and congested mere blocks away from my destination, yet still trapped, unable to move.

I honk the horn at the cars in front of me, all parked statue-still in front of the green light.

Breathe, I tell myself. He’s probably delayed, too. After all, it’s the same traffic for each of us. But even as I think the words, I know they’re not true.

He’s going to leave before I even get my chance.

I panic and honk louder. The sea of brake lights ahead turns an angry crimson red.

It’s all because of the holidays: the traffic, the stress, the post-it note from UPS with the “unable to deliver” box boldly checked in black. I didn’t want this package to come here in the first place. When I corrected my online order several days ago, I made sure that the delivery address was changed. Or so I thought. I’m leaving tomorrow, going out of town for a week, and according to UPS pre-recorded message, they’ll only try to deliver two more times – in the next two days -- before returning it to the sender. At which point we’ll all fall into that endless whirlpool of package un-delivery bureaucracy.

Unless I can get to Petco on time.

My UPS driver will be there for exactly 20 minutes, the live human at UPS told me over the phone once I had touch-toned my way through all the pre-recorded options. If I get to Petco during that precise window (with proper ID and post-it non-delivery receipt in hand), he can give me my package rather than loading it onto the truck that takes it back to the delivery center for my area. I’m almost there. But those 20 minutes are also up – 2 minutes ago.

I honk at a mini-van that hesitates way too long before turning left, making me miss the light. Two minutes later, I screech through Petco’s back alley and breathe a huge sigh of relief: there are three brown UPS vans clustered at the edge of the parking lot. I get out of my car and run toward them.

“He already left,” one particularly unstressed UPS driver tells me as he lies in a hammock strung across the back of his truck.

I haven’t even had a chance to catch my breath.

“What happened?” another driver asks. He’s slouching on a bench next to the hammock. The two of them couldn't seem more relaxed if they tried.

“He was waiting for you,” a third unbothered driver shouts from inside the truck.

“Traffic," I sigh.

All three nod in unison. Slowly.

Hammock Guy sits up. “Where’d you say you live?”

I tell him my address.

“You still have a chance,” he says.

Slumping Bench Guy nods. He straightens his posture just slightly as he starts giving me directions. “From 6 to 6:15, he’ll be in the alley behind that Chinese restaurant. Just go look for his truck.”

The three drivers resume their original laid-back positions and postures. They start telling each other what I take to be inside jokes about UPS packages.

“So 6 in the alley?” I yell into the truck, ever more aware of my own impending sense of ticking time, of all those missed packages and even more opportunities gradually slipping away, until they're simply gone, and then...

“Should be,” says Hammock Guy.

“I have a better idea,” the guy from the back of the truck steps forward with a cell phone in his hand. He dials, and after an exchange of a few bad UPS delivery jokes, manages to get the exact current location of my driver (just a few blocks away) as well as a promise that the driver won’t take his truck away from that particular sentinel until I actually arrive. My hero: the driver in the back of the brown truck saves the day, not to mention my package.

In hindsight, the trail is clear and easy-enough to follow: a misdelivery leads to a mechanical phone tree which points me to a precisely timed Petco parking lot hammock-strung rendezvous which, when missed, leads to many bad jokes and a few spurious suppositions about packages and then to a shiny double-parked truck that doesn't yet smell of Kung Pao chicken. And I even get my box in the end. The secret lives of my neighborhood UPS drivers. Who knew?

when Andy Gump joins up with those marauding Santas

“Are you stuck?” he asks.

“Uh-huh,” I say as I frantically jiggle the door.

It’s embarrassing enough to get locked inside a bathroom anywhere – when I was a student in Tours, France, long ago, I remember being at a bar when the local firemen arrived to break down the bathroom door and set an embarrassed but still beer-buzzed patron free --- but it’s definitely worse when it’s a port-a-potty. Particularly one of those blue plastic semi-permanent ones that no one has bothered to empty in a while. The good spirit of Andy Gump must just be too busy this season to visit the top of Reseda. Instead he must be trying to wedge his Hummer into one of those compact spots at the mall, or hanging enough garishly decorative lights over every conceivable surface to blow an entire metropolitan power supply, or perhaps even marauding with a group of Santas somewhere…

He’s far from here, though. That’s certain.

The metal rod in the damn lock won’t budge, and it definitely won’t clear the metal door frame. I jiggle the lock again. Harder doesn’t seem to help at all.

Don’t panic, I remind myself, thinking of all that yogic wisdom I’m supposed to hold onto in moments just like these. Just stay in the moment and breathe.

Wait. Not that. Bad idea. Particularly the breathing part if it’s too deep, unless of course I pinch my nose but then I can’t really breathe and…

In a panic, I kick the plastic door. The whole structure reverberates.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

Interesting question, I think. It depends on your perspective, I suppose. On the plus side, if I do ever manage to extricate myself, this will provide me with a conversation-stopping answer to that dreaded “most embarrassing moment” question that some people (particularly some of my more socially challenged relatives) insist on asking when they can’t find anything better to talk about.

“I can’t get the lock to open again,” I say.

“Of course,” he says. “Go figure.”

It’s been a weird, weird weekend. I spent an hour and a half yesterday driving in circles on the 5 (south then north then south then north again) then on the 10 (east then west again) looking for the First Street exit which Google maps, just before it completely crashed my printer, claimed was just off the “10 E/ I5 S”. Turns out that exit is ONLY off the 101, something I might have figured out had I ever been able to find a place to stop and consult my trusty Thomas Guide. But every time I pulled off the freeway, I found myself in a yet stranger neighborhood where yet more people were in the process of being arrested by yet another grumpy-looking police officer as the sun set and my gas gauge read closer and closer to “empty”…

Then there was dinner. It was raining by the time the three of us decided on our plan: go out, get some barbeque chicken, then come back and watch a DVD. A simple enough plan, or so it seemed. The restaurant sign read “open”, and there were even customers eating inside. But when we went to order, the two teenage girls at the register (wearing identical Santa hats and eye makeup and smacking identical green bubble gum with exactly the same giggle, as if on cue) informed us that they had run out of chickens. Completely. Then they explained that the restaurant wasn’t really open, only sort of: they were cooking for the next day, due to the rain and some complicated city regulations about commercial meat smokers and awnings vs. overhangs.

So we settled on a Plan B (which was really C or D at that point), went to the grocery story, forgot to take our purchases to the car and had to double back to retrieve them later, then finally ended up at the house where the lights were oddly yellow and dim when we arrived. And then they were simply gone: the power was completely out, not just us but our whole side of the block. We fished out flashlights, called DWP and ate by the light of spare candles, most of which were unscented. We spent the rest of the evening listening to various versions of the local tv news on battery-powered radios. On the channel I was monitoring, the anchor didn’t have anything to say about our power outage, although she did give in-depth coverage (well, in-depth for tv) to a story about a woman in Tennessee who had been found dead with three fetuses in her freezer. And I caught myself wondering whether before the woman died, she had named any of her not-quite-babies.

This morning, things seemed slightly better. Or at least we had power. And the sun was shining, enough to make us want to try to go out on the bikes. Perhaps we had turned a corner, or so I dared to hope.

No such luck.

I change tactics: I actively pull at the door frame itself, leaning my weight into it hoping to get it to bend, or shift. Somehow, in a way I can't replicate or even properly explain, it works and that annoying little metal bar on the lock clears. I'm free.

“Weird weekend,” I say as I step out into the light where it finally seems safe to breathe.

He nods.

“And by the way,” I say as to him as he moves tentatively toward the blue plastic door, “you definitely don’t want to touch that top lock today. Try the bottom one instead.”