Rejoyce, fellow Columbians! Peek your heads out from Ulysses (after you ditched the Odyssey, right?) and sprint over to the Package Center to be first in line. Just kidding—there is no line.

Although the crates behind the counter are still strewn about like the plot line of Finnegan’s Wake, employees at the Package Center happily report that they “have improved their system.” When interrogated pressed further, a reluctant employee yielded the following information:

Before:

  • Packages were sorted by last name, leading to multiple crates with the same letter, adding to search times
  • Also a bottleneck occurred when PrezBo, last name Bartlett, and last name Boone decided to get their packages at the same time

After:

  • Packages are given a number and a letter prefix, e.g. B25, and this code is recorded on the computer
  • When a student uses the kiosk for multiple packages, an employee can see exactly which crates need to be searched to assemble all the packages
  • The Package Center concede that having to search through multiple crates for multiple packages must be lesser of two evils
Whether this will keep lines to a minimum in the long run is yet to be seen. Carpe diem!