35 CommentsCurious about the results of the package center’s new “kiosk” system? After a rigorous scientific study (and like a million complaints from tipsters), we conclude it’s “working wonderfully!” and efficiency has improved by “like no percent.”
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- Today: Un-improvement
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- Yesterday: The Lord of the Flies
- Number of crossword puzzles played during the wait: 3
- Number of “fml lerner package center line” tweets: 15
- Number of times “this is bullshit” heard: 76
- People killed: 0 (so far)
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35 Comments
@Anonymous tl;dr
@Bulldozer Plan (engineer here) Room 477 and 478 in Lerner Hall need to go and be changed into an expanded mail room. IF we want to go really crazy, we add more shelves and bulldoze the top floor of ferris booth. See the problem is, we have this big pile of mail. Massive pile. A worker picked up a random piece from this pile and puts it on a shelf. This shelf location is logged and the student is then emailed. But, during peak times, there is so much mail, we can’t warehouse it in an organized matter. So, we wait until a student picks up a package to take a new package from the pile. The rate at which mail is taken by the end user is much lower then the sorting capacity of even minimal staff. Notice the staff setup up front. There is one cashier and one retriever. There is a massive chock point at the doorway behind their desk into the shelf room. We are at maximum staff. Thus, we are faced with no other option but to remove room 477 and 478 so we can add more staff effectively and increase the rate at which students retrieve their packages. I would continue on this endeavor of solving this problem in a reasonable fashion but there are 2 things happening A) Columbia is paying the worst consultant ever a lot of money and I’m not solving their problem without atleast a few free dining dollars. B) They won’t get rid of 477 and 478 because those rooms are often used for conferences and there is nowhere else really to put breakout sessions. Wait, what’s this, is this ample room on the 5th floor and columbia is just milking a cash cow. I think it is.
@Anonymous What extra room? 477 has extra soundproofing, and 478 is used by UEM. The only 5th floor space I can think of are the rehearsal rooms and the meager storage room, both used by theater groups.
@It's sad this is an improvement, a big improvement. See last year: http://bwog.com/2011/01/31/sorry-folks-not-today/
@Anonymous A helpful tip from the Columbia Class of 2015 group for anyone ordering stuff from Amazon:
protip: if you want to order something from Amazon, but don’t want to have to stand in the Lerner package center line for 21431 hours, use this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200689010
and pick up your stuff from the locker at Rite Aide on 110th.
It’s much faster, and also makes you feel like you’re living in a sci-fi movie
@gay It’s worth the wait if the hunky package center dude wearing Bonobos serves you. He has the finest ass I’ve ever seen.
@Anonymous It’s amazing. There’s a line for the kiosk now, almost going into Cafe 212.
@Anonymous some of the employees are so clueless….waited in line for more than an hour then the guy spends 10 minutes looking for my stuff and tells me “sorry, can’t find it…come back later?” thankfully another more capable employee stepped in and found it within 30 seconds.
@Anonymous just got three package center emails……nope. not doing it.
@I don't know but Kiosks are amazing. I was able to cut the massive line after swiping my ID in Lerner lobby and the package center guys already had the package on the counter for me.
@Anonymous You obviously went when nobody knew how to use them- now the line is just as long if not longer for kiosk users
@Must be nice My ID doesn’t work with the kiosk.
@Anonymous Same! What’s up wit dat?
@Anonymous I actually kind of like the package center.
@anon said nobody ever
@Anonymous except for gay men and heterosexual women.
@Anonymous Lerner Mail has been historically bad. After the “literally throw the mail in the trash” scandal in November 2001, there has only been marginal improvement.
@anon please elaborate on the scandal?
@Anonymous http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2002/05/17/after-tough-year-mail-services-looks-ahead
And nobody was fired.
@Anonymous – Lerner’s still a relatively brand new building, the mail staff are newbies
– Not enough room for efficient mail operations
– Terrorists Anthrax OMG!
– Mailroom gets overloaded
– Edict to “prioritize first class mail” gets interpreted as “throw everything else out, including magazines” (which is illegal, btw)
– Student finds 15 garbage bags full of mail on the street
– Surprise! Important bills and letters got tossed too!
– Heads roll
– More staff gets hired, package pickup hours get extended
– Incident made fun of in that year’s Varsity Show
@Anonymous No, I feel bad. It isn’t this bad at any post office near where I live at all. Ever.
It isn’t like I have a doorman taking my packages though. :-p
@Anonymous Number of times I threatened to write a very strongly worded email to the package center manager: many
Number of strongly worded emails I’ve written: zero
all kidding aside, the package center is inefficient and time consuming. That new kiosk only makes the line more chaotic. On top of that, I keep getting emails for packages that don’t exist, keep getting other people’s packages, and waste at least 50 minutes of my time.
On top of that, the staff is SO RUDE.
@Anonymous fuck that, the staff is doing the best that they can given the shitty system in place. they are only rude if you have no idea what you are doing and/or try to cause a scene.
@Anonymous I have honestly never once seen them hustle in the package center, regardless of how many people are waiting in line…
@Marina and the Diamonds No, someone was killed today; the man who looked for my packages under the name “and the Diamonds” rather than Marina. Seriously, what CIUD has the last name listed first and first name last?
Instead of spending money to fix the line, Columbia should find more competent employees.
@Anonymous Jokes aside they need to do something about that package center. The fact that course material that arrived to Lerner many days in advance of receiving a package notification is inaccessible to students is absurd. Where is our $60,000 dollars a year going? The administration needs to make more of an effort to improve services that actually improve students day-to-day experience. A lot of good a multi-billion dollar endowment or a new Manhattanville campus do if students can’t receive their books promptly and rely on functioning printers…
@Anonymous One thing that could help is the bookstore should put the textbook list up way way sooner than it does. I tried many times to order my textbooks this summer, but I couldn’t figure out what textbooks I needed to get because the bookstore didn’t put up the list until after I was back on campus. At which point I was forced to order all my textbooks to campus mailbox instead of just ordering them to my home address and bringing them with me.
@Anonymous http://imgur.com/yeD5I.jpg
The line around 5 on Friday.
@Cthulhu +1 for imgur.
@GS'16 lol@CC kids with mailboxes on campus…
signed,
GS with mailbox and apartment off campus far away from this nonsense
@Anonymous fuck you son.
@CC '14 Come on, man. I have no problem with GS—in fact, I happen to think you (a) get the shit end of the stick all too often, with less acknowledgement than Barnard and (b) really do improve the quality of this place.
So you’re going to take this cheap shot? Because if we took every opportunity like that…
@Anonymous u mad?
@Anonymous Uh, no — Barnard gets much, much more shit than GS at Columbia.
@GS'15 You may be new on campus, but this kinda shit isn’t useful or funny. You seriously want anyone to believe you’re more mature than CC students, and yet you post that?