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| WTF? (What the fish?) | |
"At first, when a pallet of boxes showed up at the Harvard Book Store's Needham warehouse earlier this month, nothing seemed fishy about it," the Boston Globe reported recently. The bookseller was prepping for its semiannual warehouse sale and regularly "gets batches of 'remainder' books... delivered in large quantities, in all sorts of packaging."
"I didn't even look twice at the pallet before signing the delivery acceptance slip," said warehouse manager Alexandra Reid. "It wasn't until we were done chatting with the delivery driver that I turned around and actually focused on what was printed on the outside of the boxes."
What she saw were dozens of green-and-white cardboard packages that read "FROZEN FISH" and "HADDOCK" in block letters. "I was immediately horrified," Reid said. "I was genuinely afraid that I had just casually accepted 600 pounds of frozen fish."
When she opened one of the boxes, however, it was filled with books. "We were immensely relieved," she said, adding that the store's regular distributor simply had extra boxes lying around and didn't want them to go to waste.
The bookstore immediately took to social media to have fun with the situation by posting a photo of the boxes and creating a contest, inviting people to come up with captions and offering a $50 gift card as a prize for the best one.
Three finalists were named on Monday and yesterday @lynzely was crowned caption contest winner for: "Available in hardcover, paperback, and fillet."
The bookstore plans to "send some of its warehouse sale book orders out in the haddock boxes, so customers will be just as confused as they were when their package arrives at the front door," the Globe noted.
"I'm going to encourage the staff to put just a little disclaimer on them so everyone--including the delivery drivers--doesn't have a heart attack," said Alex Meriwether, the shop's chief creative officer, adding that he hopes the mix-up serves as just one more "reminder of what shopping within a local economy's ecosystem looks like.... You don't see this at Amazon."