Thread by @patio11

Ruriko to Kuroneko (Japanese UPS): "Can you take my husband a brown shopping bag of clean clothes?"
Kuroneko driver: "We can only accept sealed packages, unfortunately."
Ruriko: "Oh dear."
Kuroneko driver: "So I'll need to fold the top of the bag together and apply masking tape."

Meanwhile the last time I visited the US Kuroneko and purchased a cardboard box ($10) to ship domestically (~$50) they would not give me masking tape for the box but would let me purchase a separate single-use roll for $3.50.

Part of the reason for Japanese logistics being so darn good as an experience is it treats the last quarter mile problem like the customer service that it is.

There are some downsides to this, much remarked upon domestically. The companies run their drivers absolutely ragged and, for structural reasons, are unwilling to hire despite the boom in demand caused by e-commerce.

There is also, debatably, a human capital misallocation.

(Meaning: historically this was a professionalized job and would attract people similar to office employees not similar to McDonalds employees, in it to do it for 40+ years.

Society gets a choice as to where it puts people; all choices have consequences. Not all are obvious.)

(There's some movement to use the ecommerce boom as an opportunity to deprofessionalize delivery via supplement-and-eventually-replace with app dispatched workers, which is another "all choices have consequences.")

(Further complicating matters, in Japan, "app dispatched workers" implies "far less likely than almost all workers in the economy to be linguistically capable of discussing packaging options with the end consumer.")