A Penny Earned?

For three straight trips to United Parcel Service to ship three small packages - I am not making this up - the shipping cost each time was exactly $11.92. The weights were about the same although the contents and exact size of the packages varied slightly. Still: three straight times where the charges were identical? "Maybe it's just a minimum charge," me brother Phil suggested.

I blew that theory out of the water with a fourth parcel. When the girl behind the counter told me to insert my debit card into the reader I saw - I am still not making anything up - that the charge that time was Eleven Dollars and Ninety One Cents. One. Penny. Off.

What are the chances of that, I ask?

$10.71

Ten Dollars and Seventy One Cents is not a relative term. It stands for exactly that: $10.71. However, the value of it in terms of what it can buy might vary.

Last Thursday I had to make a delivery to Grand Rapids, about a five or five and a half hour round trip from Detroit. I was sure I had taken the complete order.  Yet it turns out I had forgotten a three dollar steel clip.

The customer called me in the late afternoon that Thursday, almost as soon as I was back home. I promised to ship it first thing Friday. I did: for $10.71.

That seems like a lot to send a clip which hardly weighed an ounce. But that's where I began to wax philosophic. I have made mistakes in the past which have cost me far more than $10.71, and I certainly wasn't going to make a round trip to Grand Rapids for Ten Dollars and Seventy One Cents. So it wasn't nearly the most costly mistake of my life, and it bought me five hours of time. I can live with that.