Opportunity Cost or Just Cheap?

I walked inside the local UPS store with a 2-pound package. I wanted to ship it via USPS, thinking that it would be cheaper than the UPS rates. But their USPS rate for this package was $25 which was just a few dollars short of the content. The UPS fee was cheaper, $18 for ground shipping.

The clerk said, if I go to the actual post office, their fees would be much lower. A bit irritated and hungry, my husband agreed to drive to the post office but waited in the truck. I went inside, there was a huge line of 12 people and only one clerk, the rest were sorting mail while giving people occasional murderous looks from their tedious task on a Saturday morning.

I decided to use the electronic scale in the lobby as there was no line at all. The package was weighed, accepted, and it was time to pay $13.90. I inserted the card, forgetting that it was my husband’s card, and waited for the payment screen. The electronic gods wanted a pin, and carelessly, I used mine. It was, of course declined, as the pin was not correct. The machine asked me to try again, and I did, with the same result. Irritated to say the least, I walked back to my husband who was sitting cozily in the air-conditioned cab and asked him to come and do the pin. He touched the wrong key and again, failure. By this time, the bankcard had been locked but we had no idea.

We drove back to the UPS store, having eaten sufficient crow to gag both of us, we mailed the package for $18, an outrageous amount compared to what we were shipping.

Happy to be rid of the said package, we went to Pot Belly’s for a sandwich, but the bankcard was now locked and was declined. Bless the banksters who want to protect our cards! Now, we had the unpleasant duty to call them and explain that it was we who forgot the pin, not some card thief from the post office. We paid with cash, ate, and started laughing at the same time.

We are not sure which was more irritating, the fact that we wasted 45 minutes of our collective time, gasoline, wear, and tear on the truck, and whatever calls we must make to the bank, all of which had a steep opportunity cost, much larger than the extra postage, or the fact that we were so cheap and refused in the beginning to pay the extra $4.10 to mail the package via UPS. Lesson learned, do not mess with the UPS or the USPS, they are both quite expensive and slow.

Economics set aside, we decided on the positive side that it was all worth it because we spent “quality” time together, with the silly realization that we are old and forget pins, and that it is harder than we thought to remember so many different ones.