Delivery Notifications Ahead of the Teamsters Strike

Notification #1: Order received! You should be receiving your Ikea fridge shortly after it is diligently sorted and transported by several of the NUMBER OF MEMBERS of the Teamsters Union, who are prepared to strike for a fair contract in August.

Notification #2: We are Processing your order

Notification #3: Estimated Delivery: Sometime Before August 1st If the date changes to after August 1st, cancel the order and change to FedEx or USPS. Otherwise, you may not get the fridge until after the warranty expires.

Notification #4: Whoops, your package should have shipped yesterday. Yesterday was Juneteenth, but we don’t have the day off and so 97% of us voted not to work. Since the net income of UPS has shot up by $5 billion since 2018, we think they can afford to take the hit. The same goes for MLK Day.

Notification #5: Your package finally arrived at the sorting facility Justin, a third-generation Teamster, is now sorting your package, but he only gets a five-minute break once every four hours, so he might “make a mistake”. And when you deliver 18.7 million packages domestically each day, they can’t all be winners.

Notification #6: Your package slept at the sorting facility. Justin miss-sorted your package because all he could think about was how badly he had to pee due to the high consumption of water to beat the heat and only being allowed to use the bathroom for five minutes once every four hours, so he was really being set up for failure.

Notification #7: Escaped the warehouse! Good news, your package made it to the van with Dave, but we don’t have air conditioning in our 95,000 vans, and it’s 90 degrees today. So your package is gradually getting heat stroke, just like Dave. Bet you feel stupid for ordering ice cream online to go inside your little fridge.

Notification #8: Your package should probably be in transit, may take longer than usual as Dave has to frequently pull over to prevent losing consciousness at the wheel.

Notification #9: Out for delivery—hope your Ikea fridge will arrive on schedule, pending the arrival of a fair contract and how quickly we can get Dave into one of the newer vans with A/C, as the 95,000 we currently have will not be retrofitted.

Notification #10: Oops, we missed you. Dave will be spending the night in the fridge to protect himself from the heat before trying again tomorrow. We’d like to avoid another incident, as we are already being investigated by OSHA for one heat-related death in Texas.

Notification #11: Your package will now be delivered by the local post office, if you can find their local pickup center and manage to get there during the two hours a day they are open. You’ll be seeing this a lot if we don’t get a new contract by August, so good luck getting in at all since there’ll probably be a line out the door.

Notification #12: Thank you for choosing UPS while you can. You may pick up the fridge from your front door at your convenience because, unlike Dave and Justin, you can probably afford to work overtime.

Notification #13: Please rate your experience. Comments such as, “The Teamsters don’t understand how great the current contract is.” and “Getting paid for overtime in Amazon gift cards was a great move on management’s part during the pandemic.” would be most appreciative. Disclaimer: If you are ordering a prop for a reality show created during the writers’ strike, please fill out all orders before the Teamsters’ own contract expires on August 1st.