Red tape

Can you guess what is in the box this man is opening?

Want a hint?  Look where he is, and what company he works for.

Still need a hint?  Go back and look at our blog entry from January 26, “Lost and (not quite) found.”  That entry contains the first part of the saga of the Kindle my parents forgot on an AeroMexico plane last November.  This entry contains the next installment.  The next two photos tell all.

That's right.  I got it back!  Every week or so I have stopped by the AeroMexico office near the Zócalo to ask about the Kindle, which was in a warehouse in Mexico City.  The employees in Oaxaca were helpful, but they could not get anybody in Mexico City to respond to their inquiries.  Finally, last week they took the case to the head of operations in Oaxaca, who sent an e-mail to the head of operations in Mexico City.  I joked that we might have to elevate the inquiry to the President of the Republic before we get a response.  (Har har.)  They responded that it was only a couple of steps below the President already.

Yesterday I received a call telling me the Kindle was at the Oaxaca airport.  Although it was not the most convenient day to go to the airport, I took no chances that it might get lost again.  When I got to the airport, they were expecting me.  Several signatures and photocopies of my driver’s license later, they gave me the Kindle.

In January, I wrote that I had an “irrational sense of optimism” that we would get the Kindle back.  Maybe it was not so irrational.  It is easy to confuse red tape for disorganization.  By red tape, I mean a clerk at the post office cross-referencing a certified mail receipt in three different ledgers before retrieving the package from a shelf with only four certified packages to choose from (as happened when I picked up a birthday present someone mailed to Helen); or the cashier at Max’s and Helen’s school spending five minutes typing who-knows-what into the computer before being able to accept their monthly tuition payment; or, as was the case with the Kindle, needing to go high enough in the chain of command before receiving a response from Mexico City.  There is not much one can do when things are disorganized, but with enough time and patience it is possible to cut through red tape.  That happened here.  Eventually the right person made the right inquiry to the right person at the right time.  It was just a matter of being able to wait for it to happen without giving up.

Sadly, however, the saga is not over.  Four months of sitting unused in a warehouse was more than the Kindle could handle.  Its battery is dead and must be replaced.  So now we turn to Amazon to see if it will honor the warranty.  Hopefully it will.  And with less red tape.