I got my brother's Christmas gift today (well, it's for him and his fiancee), as it was languishing in the Babson College mail room since the 21st, when it came in (the mail room was closed when I last checked my box and found the pacakge slip). With this package, I think I see one of the main reasons the economy's in the crapper.

The box it came in is somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 inches wide and long, and 12 inches high. So it's a good sized box. Inside that box, wrapped in a ream of that packing paper, is a smaller white box. That box is about a quarter of the size of the first box. It's a nice white box, with a ribbon. I didn't ask for wrapping. They could have saved the nice white box and the ribbon for someone who wanted it instead of wasting it on me.

In that box, in tissue paper and near a large quantity of bubble wrap (but not actually wrapped in it!), is the present. That package is about 8 inches long, 4-5 inches wide, and an inch thick. It could have been sent in a well-padded envelope. Instead, it was sent in TWO boxes, both well oversized, and no doubt costing an assload to ship. If the future of on-line shopping is getting thimbles in refrigerator boxes, it looks like I'm heading back to the mall. Which would help the economy, outside of slowing demand for large boxes and mass quantities of bubble wrap.