You know something I just take for granted? That people understand how to behave at an ATM. Like, you keep as large a distance as humanly possible between yourself and the person who is currently withdrawing money, right? That’s the unofficial but universally acknowledged acceptable behavior while waiting your turn at an ATM.

I went to the bank this morning, and the drive-up ATM was out of order, so I had to go to the ATM that’s on the outside of the bank. The best and most logical place to stand is to the side of the ATM, which allows the person at the ATM to keep the person waiting in their peripheral vision. Plus, if you were to stand directly behind the person at the ATM, you would be in the street, which seems unsafe.

Today, a dude stood RIGHT BEHIND me, and he was not in the street, which means that he was maybe three feet away. I felt Very Uncomfortable, and tried to convey this by looking fearfully over my shoulder at him several times. He was not deterred. I thought about asking him to give me some space but didn’t because maybe that would just speed up the mugging. My thoughts did not deter him either. I did all my business while he was standing there, practically breathing down my neck. To be fair, he neither mugged nor murdered me, so perhaps my anxiety was unwarranted. But still. A person doesn’t know she won’t be mugged until she ISN’T, and standing right behind a person while she withdraws money doesn’t give strong I’m Not A Mugger vibes.

Another thing I take for granted? Free shipping. Amazon has really made free shipping something I expect, to the point that I will actively Not Buy something if there is an associated shipping cost. I mean, not always, but usually. 

Along with free shipping, Amazon has made it so easy to return things, that I am beginning to take the whole process for granted. 

Do you remember a few years ago when you’d have to print out a shipping label AND some sort of packing slip, and you’d have to pack your returns up neatly and take them to the post office? Now, in most cases, you don’t even need a box! All you have to do is take the item itself to one of Amazon’s designated return locations and hand it to someone and off you go. Easy peasy. 

So when I returned some shoes recently, I didn’t really examine the fine print. Sure, they were a Zappos order, but Zappos is owned by Amazon, so… same thing, right? Apparently not. 

I took my shoes in their boxes, in their packing boxes, to the UPS Store. This is a UPS Store that I go to multiple times a year, by the way. The person who is typically staffing the desk never recognizes me. Never. “Have you ever shipped with us before?” he asks, every single time. There is a weird quirk with my parents’ address where it does not show up in the UPS system, even though UPS definitely ships things to my parents, and so every time I ship things to them, I have to tell him, “Your system says this address doesn’t exist, but it does” and yet even with this disclaimer he is baffled and concerned every time.

Listen, I realize that this lovely person, who is if not friendly then at least not actively unfriendly and who always helps me complete the transactions I am there to transact, sees dozens of people each day. I am but one cardboard droplet in a sea of boxes, so I don’t really expect him to KNOW me or anything. I am not that memorable, that’s fine. But I guess I am a little surprised he doesn’t remember the “this address doesn’t exist” thing. Especially because we go through the whole rigamarole two or three times a year where I say, in advance, that their address isn’t in the system, but they still get packages I send them, and he looks at the system and says in obvious surprise, “My computer says there is no address here” and I tell him how my parents live in the middle of nowhere but they DO get UPS shipments and know their UPS delivery person very well, and he opens his eyes very wide and says, “I guess you’d have to get to know each other really well in the middle of nowhere!” and I agree and he says, in a tone of deep skepticism, “Well, if you’re sure it will get there, I’ll override the system” and I say that’s perfectly fine, I’m sure they will get the package, and then he mispronounces my parents’ street. It is a well-honed routine that I now know by heart. But I guess he probably sees a lot of things that are much more noteworthy. Anyway, the whole thing amuses me. 

This most recent visit, I put down my two boxes of return shoes and held out my return code for him to scan. He said, “You have to tape the boxes shut.” I looked at him.  

“Do you have some tape on you?” he said, which I thought was a very amusing question. No, I did not have tape on me. 

“Well, I can do it for you, but it will cost a dollar.”

While I thought about this new development, he added, “If you pay cash. And it’s two dollars if you pay with credit card.” 

I looked at him. While it is more likely for me to have cash on me than packing tape, I did not have any cash at that time. 

“I guess I will have to pay for it with credit card,” I told him. And honestly, good for the UPS Store for pushing back on these return policies and saying that they deserve to be paid for the time it takes their employees to deal with returns. Irritating to me, because now I have to pay for it, but I am a quick learner and will not make the same mistake next time.

He looked at me, incredulous that I would pay two dollars (or maybe it was two dollars per box? I’m not sure) instead of paying with cash or just whipping out a roll of pocket tape and taping the boxes my own damn self.

“I guess you could buy a roll of packing tape for $3.99,” he suggested.

Okay, yes, that’s a better use of my money. Let’s do that.

I pulled a roll of UPS brand packing tape off the shelf and handed it to him. He unwrapped it for me. “Let me start this for you,” he said. “It can be a little tricky.”

I mean, it’s tape, not assembling a supercomputer. But thank you for your service, my dude.

“You want to make sure that the tape always stays behind these little notches,” he instructed earnestly, because perhaps I did not know how packing tape works. He’s never seen me before, after all; all he knows about me is that I’m too dumb to tape my boxes before dropping them off and too unprepared to keep a roll of tape carabiniered to my waistband.

He very carefully, very painstakingly fitted the tape behind the two worthless little notches.

He had more to say. “You want to make sure that the tape stays behind the notches because otherwise you won’t be able to find the end again.” 

Yes, I am well aware of tape’s proclivity for sadism. 

He handed me the packing tape. Okay, I guess I am really going to tape up these boxes while he supervises. Fine. I don’t want to violate any UPS labor laws. 

The tape, of course, declined to stick to the edge of the box. The UPS staffer had to hold it down for me. And then the box flaps refused to meet in the middle so I could tape them closed. He helped me with that, too. 

“Wait,” he said, as I was about to stretch the tape across the now closed opening between the flaps. “Let me put the new label on over the old one.” So I held my new roll of packing tape awkwardly aloft while he fitted the label on underneath. The label caught on the tape, pulling it out from behind the useless notches. It took our combined effort to extricate the label from the tape.

Also useless were the teeth, which did not tear the tape neatly from the roll. Instead, the tape stretched screechingly and folded and stuck to itself. I managed, with not a small amount of effort, to unstick it from itself without unsticking it from the box and managed to get the tape to tear from the roll. One box down. 

Someone had come into the store while I was taping. She was waiting patiently quietly, several feet behind me, with her arms full of boxes. I sure hope she’d taped them at home. 

I went to tape the second box, but, saran-wrap style, the tape had affixed itself to itself. I turned the seemingly seamless roll around and around, searching for the end. When I finally found it I picked at it with a fingernail. A tiny sliver peeled up. I picked at the tape next to the sliver. Another tiny sliver peeled up and then detached onto my finger. While it wasn’t wild about attaching itself to a cardboard box, it sure had no issues adhering to my skin. 

A second person came into the UPS Store. 

The UPS staffer continued to supervise. Probably biting his tongue to keep from telling me how I was doing it wrong.

Another sliver peeled up. 

“Wow, this is really messed up,” I said.

“That’s why I told you to make sure it stays behind the notches,” he offered. 

A third person came in.

At the post office, which I know the UPS Store is not, the staff has you move to the side if you are doing something – putting a stamp on your letter, filling out a label, taping a box with tape they provide you at no charge – and then they help the next person until you are ready to resume your transaction. WHY WAS THIS GUY NOT DOING THAT.

I took some deep breaths. Why wasn’t the UPS staff person suggesting that this roll was defective? Surely he didn’t expect me to PAY for this piece of junk? The large piece of tape I’d finally managed to detach from the roll tore in half and spitefully affixed itself to my forearm.

A fourth person came in. The first person shifted her stack of boxes to her other hip. The second or third person coughed.

A frustrating and ridiculous task is always so much less stressful to perform when you have an audience of people who just want to drop off their boxes and get to work. Wait, did I say less stressful? I meant infinitely MORE STRESSFUL.

“This tape is really terrible,” I said to the staff person, my voice high-pitched with suppressed panic. He did not comment.

By the time I finally got the entire breadth of tape to lift away from the roll as one sheet, the end of the tape was a veritable fringe and my hands were riddled with tape scraps.

I taped the second box. The UPS person stuck a label on it. I paid for the motherfucking roll of jerkass tape, which I refrained from throwing at the wall, peeled all the tape from my hand, picked tapelets out from under my fingernails, and crumpled the scraps into a ball (which I of course then carried with me and disposed of properly), and fled, avoiding the eyes of all the people who had come in to witness my humiliation.

I ordered and received another shipment of shoes; none of those fit, either. So I have to send them back.

But I sure as hell taped that box shut in the low-pressure quiet of my own home.