Day seventy-five

This is something I've been sitting on for the past few days, and now I've got the opportunity To write about this subject. This topic encompasses what may be the single most complicating factor of my work.

I'd like to write about the rather convoluted and often confusing rules of packing and shipping paper goods. Please note that the guiding principle of these rules seems to be:

"Every hard and fast rule has a built-in exception, expect when it doesn't."

1. Orders are itemized by what time of day they must be shipped out. Anything being sent overnight and picked up on site must be done by 5:00 pm, 2nd day items by 7:00, and ground and home deliveries by 10:00. This rule applies every day but Friday, when overnights and pickups can be pushed back to 7:00, and 2nd days to 10:00 with everything else.

2. Every order to pack has a printed barcode to which a sample of the order must be attached. Most of the time, taking any one copy of the printed order for the sample is acceptable. Some orders are printed with a numerical sequence (tickets, invoice blanks, etc.) that must be kept in order. In that place, extras are printed that are un-numbered from which you draw the sample.

In the case of rolls of labels, there may be a sample taken from the printing, or there may simply be a picture of the item used.

3. Speaking of rolls of labels, when those are boxed, they must be placed into plastic bags to keep them safe for transport. However, some rolls are too big to bag and have to be paper-wrapped. The company doesn't necessarily like that we do this, but sometimes that's how it has to be done.

4. Every order is called a "job" and some job have multiple parts. Multiple-part jobs can and ought to be boxed together, because they will share a common receiving address. However, in the case of things like business cards, which can have multiple jobs printed but for different people at the same common address, each part is boxed separately, each box gets it's own sample, and then they are placed together in a common box for shipping.

5. At the moment, we as packers/shippers cannot send out anything ourselves that is being shipped internationally. Any international orders we receive, we may pack, but have to send to the main shipping department to be processed. The company may change this policy in the near-future.

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I personally deal with at least any three of these rules on any given day. It makes for a complicated job, one that demands an enormous attention to detail. Fortunately, now that the digital room is becoming better organized, the process is becoming easier. I pray that as things improve, so will our work load.