FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#726 – Part 2 of the Traveling Shoes – Natural Disaster

Posted by Editor | Filed under Uncategorized

An invisible army roams the world at night, silently connecting us with the fruits of our economic existence. Until I started buying custom shoes from Nike, I never thought much about the movement of commerce. But now, when I order shoes or some other item, they send me the UPS.com tracking information. That has allowed me to follow my merchandise from its point of origin to my feet.

As I mentioned in Part 1, I own 3 pairs of shoes that have visited Ho Chi Minh City and Incheon, and have travel through China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan. From there, my boxes went to Anchorage, then Louisville, before retiring to Scottsdale, Arizona.

I recently ordered some more stuff from Nike, including an orange shoulder bag with a bull on the side and the words, “I won this from a guy who called.” When I started following the bag’s route on UPS’s web site, I didn’t expect to see anything different from the last time. On March 30 and March 31, the bag was in Dongguan and Guangzhou, a pair of cities in the giant industrial province of Guangdong. Nothing to see here; I had learned about both cities from the last shipment.

On Thursday, April 2, I checked the tracking detail and found this bizarre entry:

“Guangzhou, CN – 4/02/09 – 3:57 PM – NATURAL DISASTER”

It was followed by another entry that indicated the import scan for the bag took place in Louisville, Kentucky on April 2 at 11:30 AM. (all times are local.)

I was riddled with questions: Was the natural disaster? Was there an earthquake in Guangzhou? Did my bag escape unharmed? Why did they note the natural disaster on April 2nd When my bag departed Guangzhou on March 31?

I started by looking for answers on the internet but there were no reports of earthquakes, tsunami or other disasters – either natural or man-made – in that region over the several previous days.

I tried to get an explanation from UPS but found it amazingly difficult when going through regular channels. Simply put, UPS doesn’t want to talk to you or hear from you.

I tried e-mailing them with my question but couldn’t. You have to follow several screens of categories and fit within one of those categories to send them an e-mail. In addition, each category has its own FAQ screen that is supposed to answer your inquiry without an e-mail. I never got to a screen where I could type in a question and press “send.”

On the phone they likewise appear to be staffed entirely by cyborgs. In choosing among options on the first several automated menus, you never get the option to ask for an operator or a customer representative.

I beat their system.

By responding to none of the menu items and repeating “talk to an operator!” I was able to reach a human being (or a stunningly life-like robot). The woman/fembot ended up being remarkably helpful. She started off by assuring me that my package was fine and that I would receive it on time. I already knew this; I was asking out of shear curiosity but figured if I said it that way, I wouldn’t get much of an answer. “Somewhere along the route of your package,” she told me, “there was a natural disaster, but not where your package was in transit.”

But where was the natural disaster?

“Let’s see … Oh, there was a volcano eruption in Alaska the week before last so we are routing packages away from that area.” That would explain why my package went from China to Louisville without the customary stop in Anchorage.

Because of the message on the bag (“I won this from a guy who called”) I will always remember the circumstances of acquiring it, but its orange surface is pristine, unpocked by volcanic ash, so I am left with no memento of its journey halfway around the world. If, however, at the World Series of Poker, I drop it in the dirt, or someone kicks it under the table, or it gets a cigarette butt dropped on it during a break, you can bet that I will preserve that mark and have a whopper of a story to tell.

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