I’ve lived on this earth for nearly 40 years. Most of that time has been spent in Belfast, one of the more backward cities in the western hemisphere. I have been subjected to all manner of incompetence over the years…it’s a way of life here. You’d think I would be used to it by now.

I have (yes, still have) a package in transit to me from Thomann’s music warehouse. My goods were despatched ten days ago, and they have spent the last eight days in a DHL delivery van repeatedly not being delivered to my house.

The excuse a DHL apologist gave me…now listen up…is that none of the drivers delivering my package is familiar with the area around my address.

That’s right: none of DHL’s delivery men has heard of the major road on which I live, nor can read an A-to-Z, nor can lift a phone to find out, nor can ask a pedestrian.

DHL’s core business is to deliver packages to buildings. To fulfill that mission, it hires drivers that don’t know their ways around Belfast. Can you spot the flaw in this plan?

Five times in eight days my package has been “out for delivery”. And five times it has returned to the depot. I can see this on DHL’s Parcel Tracking web site. Conveniently, that web site offers no means whatsoever for contacting the depot (I had to trick a motorcycle courier into giving me the phone number).

And all this, gratis, from the International Express Operator of the Year 2005 & 2006. Yup, DHL has already picked up an award in a year barely half over.

This city or, more accurately, the DNA that pollutes it, deserves the same fate as Pompeii. We are what the neutron bomb was invented for. We aspire to mediocrity.

Update:

Eventually, after 10 days of shoulder-shrugging from DHL’s Belfast staff, I drove all the way to DHL’s depot near the docks and collected the damn package myself.

Naturally I had to wait half an hour until the van-driving cretin inevitably brought my undelivered package back to base once more.

Oh look…my name and address are clearly labelled on the box. Bang goes that marginally feasible explanation.

And to round off this whole debacle, I was momentarily dumbstricken by the lank on the front desk’s feigned puzzlement: he claimed that the driver playing Indian Giver with my package not only lives on the same road as me, but always personally delivers packages after hours and at weekends to clear any backlogs from his route. Clearly, the staff at DHL Belfast, are out of their tiny, tiny minds.