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?