I'll have it once your done, thanks!!

Today seems to be the day from hell for more than just me.

It started like this....last week Thursday, I sent a 3 part package via "insert courier here", with explicit instructions that the packages needed to be in Windhoek by Monday (yesterday). They're parts and brochures that needed to be there for a presentation that's happening today (Tuesday).

So yesterday, my contact in Windhoek phones me to say that only one of the packages have arrived. Now please remember, they were sent as one package, with three parts, but only one part had arrived in Windhoek.

I promptly got on the phone with our distinguished couriers, after using the online tracking facilities to see where the other two parts of my package were.

It seems that my packages had somehow developed a mind of their own, and had gone to see the world. The landed at Feltham Airport in the lovely Britain on Friday of last week. Not content with only seeing a small part of beautiful England, they decided to take a short flight to Stansted Airport as part of their journey. Finally they hopped over to Koeln (Cologne) in Germany, before flying back to Johannesburg on Sunday.

As fascinating as their tour must have been, my problem was that they were still not in Windhoek. So yesterday afternoon, I had a long conversation with one of the guys in the export department of these wonderful couriers, and he assured me that the sightseeing packages would be delivered to the door of my contact in Windhoek, by the manager of their Windhoek branch, today. He even gave me his direct number to follow up on the progress of the delivery.

Why then is this the day from hell you ask? Well, I checked the online tracking system again this morning, just before phoning the guy in exports, to see if the package had at least arrived in Windhoek yet. (as was promised to me) It had not.....or at least, that's what the website said. The guy in export couldn't tell me, because he wasn't there!!

I spent 20 minutes bouncing off the walls before phoning them again and getting through to Mark, my knight in shining armour. According to Mark, he'd only scanned out one parcel last night, and the other one had only arrived back in Johannesburg this morning. Neither of us had any idea which tracking number went with which parcel, so he couldn't even tell me which one was in Windhoek.

What followed was two hours of stressing and phoning to try and find out which package was in Windhoek, which one in Joburg or if both had gone off to Windhoek after all. At long last, the nice lady at the courier office in Windhoek phoned me to tell me that both parcels had arrived at their destination in Windhoek. I cried tears of joy!!...

...That is, until my colleague phoned me. Somehow, my waybill for the one parcel, had ended up in someone else's parcel, and their little box of chemicals had been delivered in Windhoek, instead of my box of VERY expensive cables....which were now officially missing.

Boss-man and my colleague managed to make another plan with the cables (thankfully) so they could continue with the presentation, however, that box needed to be found. So after 3 more hours of phoning around, I convinced Mark, and his counterpart in Windhoek that they should go on a massive man(box)-hunt of both airports to try and find the missing parcel.

Finally, at 16:00 this afternoon, Heila in Windhoek phoned me back to let me know that they'd found the renegade parcel, and that it was, in fact, still in Joburg. I requested that it stay here, because it would need to come back anyway. She phoned me back 40 minutes later to tell me that it was already ready to leave for Windhoek and that they couldn't hold it back anymore. So now she will keep it in her office when it arrives there tomorrow morning, relabel it, and wait for our go-ahead to return it to Joburg again.

This is the last I heard, and the news that I need to convey to my boss......

....so MsB...pass the lube when you're done, please....I'm going to need it!!