Most of my Christmas shopping consists of sitting in front of the computer and letting my fingers do the walking. It makes my life so much easier to do it this way and I'm much less apt to get cranky if I don't have to deal with people. With seven grandchildren to buy for, I don't have the energy to figure out what each one would want as a gift. My solution to the grandchildren gift dilemma is this: I have them write a list of all of the books they want and then I buy them. They are happy and my shopping takes very little time.
Some of the books that the kids ask for are out of print, so I do business with the used book stores online. But, the majority of what is wanted are new books, so Barnes & Noble gets a good chunk of money out of us every year. And because I had a number of per cent off coupons to use, I wound up placing three separate orders to finish up my B&N shopping. Yesterday I got a little more than 1/3 of the books I ordered.
These books were sent in three separate boxes--but they were NOT from three separate orders:
Now, to fully appreciate how absolutely ridiculous the difference in the packaging and the contents is, here is a picture of the two side-by-side:
First of all, I have a problem with the amount of packaging, because it is completely wasteful. As you can see, all of the books could have fit in one box, instead of being shipped in three. This makes little sense to me, as all of these books are sent to the same address, paid for from the same credit card, and the same membership number is used to make the purchases. Sending so many boxes couldn't possibly be profitable for B&N, as I get free shipping for EVERYTHING because I'm a member. Ridiculous.
Until these companies can figure out a way to use less shipping material, I don't want to hear another word about how we should do everything to be 'green.' MY little amount of wastefulness is a drop in the bucket compared to what I'm seeing from the companies I deal with on a regular basis.
that totally doesn't make ANY sense. Why did they use 3 boxes instead of shipping all of the books in ONE?
ReplyDeleteI ordered a calendar from B&N last month. It came in a huge box that was filled with those air-filled paks. I guess they didn't have any thin, square sized boxes to ship my calendar in. It's so wasteful! But luckily we have recycling so I can just break up the cardboard boxes and recycle them.
ReplyDeletejanet: I had the exact same thing happen to me about a week before the books started coming in. And yes, we have recycling, too, so that is the only saving grace with the entire mess.
ReplyDeletemeleah: I know, hey? It makes NO SENSE. I'm pleased to announce that SOME people understand all of this: the used books that I ordered have ALL been coming in the mailer envelopes--a lot 'greener' in terms of amount of material AND completely waterproof/resistant, too! So, I don't need to worry if a package is left on the back porch for some time before I retrieve it.