What This Post Was Supposed to Be About

The original aim for this blog update involved a continued conversation on AI and its effects on jobs. There's a real controversy there. Technology continues to disrupt lifestyles, business models and social norms. What's more, as history shows, the development of AI technology in particular disrupts people's employment.

At the same time, it improves the productivity of those who find ways to use it. I admit that I research and plan with its capabilities. Where I cannot find a sounding board or a listener for my meandering thought trains, I have ChatGPT.

And, for all my personal uses, you find people out of work. From a radio host to a copywriter to a voice actor, I see others meet difficulty as a result of this recent development. That story and its discussion holds both relevance and importance to the average reader, employee, or bystander in between.

That's what this post would've been about. But thanks to what happened yesterday, it's not.

What Happened Instead

I can't bring you prim and proper prose about the ramifications of artificial intelligence because someone at my apartment complex stole my package.

How do I know? I happened to work from home yesterday. I received an update at approximately 2:40 PM that my mail was delivered. My misfortune came from missing that notification. Yet, I did not arrive much later.

At about 3:50, nearing my time to quit for the day, I noticed I received an email about my delivery. I didn't anticipate its arrival because the last I checked, the delivery date shared was today, Wednesday.

The kind people at United Parcel Service found my package able to arrive sooner than later and it genuinely caught me off guard.

I went down to the leasing office, where the mail room is separated only by a door, with a login kiosk. The information is distributed to access the kiosk is available to all the tenants on leases at the complex. As a roommate of one such particular tenant, I had access and went to retrieve my mail 70 minutes after its delivery.

It was too late.

I scanned the entire room twice. The leasing office does what they call a kindness and organizes the mail. They mark the apartment number as well as the building number on the box to organize the chaos. This way, if you live on 76 Applegate, Apt. 274, you're only scanning for "76 274" in black permanent marker on your box.

I failed to anticipate how quickly scarce minds take what’s not theirs.

My mail was most likely branded with Ulta Beauty on its side. For those unfamiliar, Ulta Beauty is an American chain of beauty stores. The fatal error with branded mail is that many can surmise what is inside.

Thus, scarce people have an incentive to locate boxes branded with desirable brands and take what does not belong to them.

Now, some might bring up mail room cameras. I reasoned with my girlfriend, for whom the mail was destined as a gift, that the cameras are largely psychological deterrents. They communicate that surveillance takes place, but they don't assure it.

I doubt this complex possesses the facilities to record meaningful surveillance. I hold that someone spotted the UPS delivery truck, entered the mail room, and scanned for potential valuables to pilfer before their rightful owners claimed them.

For those curious, I did reach out to Ulta fulfillment, but for anyone familiar with logistics in the US, once the service marks their payload as "Delivered", they offer nothing in assurance. They completed their end and hold no quarter not helping you receive your mail.

The icing on that cake involves this. There is a section of the delivery page for "Proof of Delivery". For a brief moment, some drivers did take haphazard, blurry phone images of the box where they left it inside the mail room. This would serve as evidence the package arrived on location.

There was no Proof of Delivery for my package. Now, UPS has delivered unmarked packages for me in the past. Given this anecdote, I realize how fortunate I am I follow my deliveries very closely and arrive simultaneously, if not moments after the mail comes.

I received a costly personal computer via delivery from UPS. In that case, you can believe I did not even let them put it in the mail room. I was waiting outside and took it from the driver personally, because it required signature and because I would be damned if a motherfucker stole my PC.

Is It True?

I was inspired recently by an anime, Classroom of the Elite. The premise follows an interesting premise where meritocracy earns points, equivalent to monetary value. Now, I encourage you to watch the series, as it was recently slated for a fourth season, which they announced in September 2024.

Each episode begins with a quote from a philosopher to give context to the events of the episode. There are thoughts from Adam Smith, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and more.

The one quote that struck me today after this hassle from my petty theft experience follows from Jean-Paul Sartre,

"Hell is other people."

I leave you to wonder about my stance. In truth, I wrote this to unburden myself from the gross display of lack and scarcity and surround myself with the abundant thinking of my readers here.

What do you think?

Is hell other people?