A Chaotic Day of Parcels in Burgas

A fun start to the day. Didn't sleep well, because I was waiting for an SMS with a PIN code from the courier service to pick up a parcel. I got the SMS at 12:10, even though the office is open until 13:00 on Saturdays, and the city bus was leaving at 12:20. I immediately jumped up, got dressed, and ran to catch the bus.

It's three stops to the office; I usually walk, but this time there was little time before closing and it was raining. I made the bus; the driver and conductor were sitting in the gazebo near the final stop and weren't in any hurry to set off. But at the courier office there was a queue of 8-9 people ahead of me.

My turn came after 20 minutes; by then more than 10 people had already gathered in the queue behind me. I picked up the parcel with the notebooks I'd bought on sale. One is for taking notes at the course lectures I'll be attending. The other is just for personal notes that I'll carry around with me.

After that I decided to go straight into town to get groceries for the coming week. There were exactly 5 minutes left until the next bus. Since less than 45 minutes had passed since the start of the previous bus ride, the bus ride was free.

In town I had breakfast at the mall. Interestingly, only one fast-food place was open in the food court, my very favorite one, The Cups, which serves healthy food. Healthier, at least, than the other fast-food places. It seems they even have more customers during the lockdown, since they're the only one in the food court.

Then I went to the supermarket and stocked up on groceries for the week. While I was waiting for the bus at the stop, at 15:05 I got a call from the courier office; they said they had a parcel in my name without a phone number. They said the office was still open. I took the bus to the office.

I quickly ran into the office and picked up the package. It was a book from Apress; not only did they not provide a phone number, they also cut off the apartment number and left only the building number. The courier couldn't call, nor could he leave a notice in the mailbox.

It's a good thing the office worker already remembered me well and called me at the number they had in their database. If they hadn't known me there, the parcel would have been lost. It's strange that Apress is so careless with shipments - cutting off the address, not providing a phone number.

And it's awesome that, despite the listed working hours until 13:00, the Speedy courier office worked until the very end. They're swamped with packages right now after the Black Fridays (there were two of them in Bulgaria), the parcels are piled up right up to the entrance, and one person is processing them.

After that I quickly ran to the bus stop and managed to hop onto the same bus I'd arrived on; it was making a loop around the district, which took two stops. I really didn't want to walk three stops home with a load of groceries or wait about 30 minutes for the next bus with frozen food.

A pretty positive haul for the day, it turns out. Especially considering that I bought all this with huge Black Friday discounts.