bam: think twice before making online purchases

As much as I love to support small businesses, I am guilty of making a majority of my purchases, both personal and gifts, online. In fact, I realized on Christmas morning that I had done all of my Christmas shopping entirely on the internet...whoops. Clearly, I hardly think twice about loading up my cyber shopping cart and checking out online, expecting items to arrive at my door in 5-7 business days (I still am unsure of what qualifies as a business day. Is Saturday a business day?). That was until I listened to this quick, 20 minute story on one of my usual podcasts, RadioLab, called Brown Box, which is all about the crazy behind the scenes process of how orders make it from your computer to your doorstep.

A reporter talks about her time working as a "picker" for a shipping company that receives online orders. A "picker", as you'll learn on the episode, receives the items you just ordered to their handheld scanner and then is allotted almost no time to go find the item in a ginormous warehouse and put it on a conveyer belt before they receive another request for an item to go run and find. Hearing about this reporter's experience really makes you think twice before clicking that "Quick, buy it!" button on Ruelala.

That being said, I can't wait for this romper to arrive that I impulsively ordered online to wear to my friend's bachelorette party in Miami this weekend...

You can't expect me to change overnight!

-Cam