Unheard Of

In over 25 years of being a courier, this has never happened to me, nor have I heard of it happening.

It started out as an ordinary enough run for its type. A construction company in the metro area was sending a sealed bid out to a hoped-for job. The timing was great: they called us early in the morning and the bid opening was for three that afternoon. The fact that the drop was in St. Cloud just made the run sweeter without challenging any of my skills as a driver or encouraging me to break any speed limits. There was time for a coffee break, a drop-paperwork-off-at-work break, or even a flat tire break if needed. In fact, I arrived at 11:00 AM.

Here's where it got interesting. The woman at the front desk deferred signing for it, saying she needed to find a different person who'd just walked away. Fair enough: often one individual is assigned keeping track of all bids. But I watched her talk to that woman, who then rushed off to consult with another person out of my view, which wasn't all that ordinary. Fine, I'll just stand and wait here, no prob.... Damn!

Well, at least I'd had a long sit-down on the way up, and likely another on the way back to the cities before my next job.

When she did return, the first thing she said was they were going to have to refuse the bid. I may have looked as surprised as I felt, for she rushed on to inform me that they'd just found out the bid specs were wrong. There was an error in the prevailing wage information. But if I just looked online that afternoon, the correct innformation would be posted along with the new bid date.

Wow! Incompetent much?

After reminding her I was "just the messenger", and would pass that information along to the customer, I got her to at least sign the form along with the word "refused" so I could still get paid. Then I called headquarters. The customer needed to be informed, and given the chance to decide what they wanted me to do with the envelope. I knew I could be trusted to rip the thing up and never let anybody get the information inside, but what company in their right mind would trust a person they only knew by job title and smile? So I was unsurprised when orders came back to return it to the customer.

Cool! A paid out-of-town round trip. I was happy with deadheading back and waiting for my next run, but will never argue with getting paid for it instead. Of course the sending company wasn't thrilled with double the expense for no results. I hope they never again hear, "Oops, gee, sorry, we screwed up but you get to pay." It will be tripple by the time the new bid has to be submitted.