So I gave UPS a call around 6:40PMish and they told me I'm in luck - my local UPS distribution center will give me a call within an hour to give me a time for pickup. So an hour rolls by, I receive the call, and the UPS guy tells me "Unfortunately, you won't be able to pick up your phone tonight. You'll have to pick up your phone Monday morning between 9:00AM to 6:00PM." Giving up on UPS, I gave up my fight to get my phone tonight.
Or, did I?
Reading on this forum about the dude who blocked the FedEx truck with his car, I decided to take action into my own hands and pretend like I never received the call that said my phone couldn't be picked up today. It was about 9:40PM when I rolled up to the Distribution Center... nothing but an empty parking lot with one car leaving, a night guard patrolling the grounds, and a lone service window with two employees going through some brown boxes. I park my car, the night guard asks "How can I help you?" I respond, "I'm picking up a missed delivery." The night guard says, "I don't know, I think they're pretty much wrapped up... lemme check."
He walks 50 feet away from me and talks to the employees. I can't hear a word he's saying. He walks back and says, "You're here to pick up an iPod, right?" Assuming he meant "iPhone", I responded "yes!" He says, "Come on up! You got real lucky because they were just about to close up!"
So, I walk up to the service window, hand over my slip and say "I'm here to pick up my package." She already has a 1.5'x1.5' brown box with iPhone packages in there. She asks for my ID, looks at my name, then looks through the boxes... all 13 of them there... none of them mine. She then asks me for my address, walks in the back, brings out a brown box, and hands it to me... it's my iPhone! She asks for my last name, has me sign on that dirty-box'ed digital dotted line, and sends me off... "have a good day!"
UPS has redeemed themselves (well, actually, the kind UPS lady handling the after-hour pick-ups has redeemed my view of UPS). She seemed really tired when I went to the distribution center. She told me there was a line of over 300 folks to pick-up their missed phones tonight.
This woman fixed the faults of two of her co-workers... the delivery guy for not taking the "extra time" to ring my doorbell just so he could get home... and the customer service phone rep that told me I wouldn't be able to pick up my phone until Monday. This woman sacrificed her hours to fix her co-workers mistakes. Shout-outs goes to her and all employees that have her same work ethic.
UPS, you need to hire more people like her.
