programmer

Two days ago my wife placed an on-line order at Walmart for a metal-frame bunk bed for our grandchildren to sleep on when they stay over at our house. Yesterday it arrived. Wow! One day delivery to my front door. Someone cared.

The metal-frame parts for the bunk bed came in a box that was, perhaps, 4ft X 18in X 6in, or 3 cu ft. It weight about 100 lbs. I looked at this carton with a growing sense of despair, knowing that the next several hours of my life would be in the hell of unpacking and assembly. I've been in that hell before. I had no desire to return to it. But I love my grand children and I wanted them to have a nice place to sleep. So...

I set my jaw and opened that box.

Have you ever seen the movie "Pulp Fiction"? Do you remember the briefcase? The golden glow? Well, it wasn't quite like that; but it was close. The innards of that box were packed -- perfectly. I had expected chaos. I had expected peanuts! (No! NO! Not PEANUTS!.... Run Away!....) Instead, I found a perfect rectangular prism of parts and well formed packing material.

The packing material was not that horrible, nails-on-chalkboard, land-fill-fodder, phosgene generating styrofoam. No, this packing material was blocks of thick corrugated cardboard. Tough. Recyclable. Form Fitting. Cardboard. And these cardboard blocks were perfectly shaped to fill any empty space in that carton.

It was a masterpiece of packing. I stood in awe of it. From the moment I opened that box, it was clear to me that someone cared.

What's more, as I gradually took the pieces out of the box I found that each piece was nicely wrapped in clear plastic, with little cardboard end caps for those pieces with sharp or oddly shaped ends. The parts were laid in the box in an orderly fashion that was very easy to understand. Removing the parts was trivial, and did not result in any clanging or banging or bumping. It just all came apart with a trivial amount of effort.