Has anyone seen my laptop?????

I have waited, and waited, and waited for my FUCKING laptop to arrive. I am so over this! Dell called me last Friday and said they would deliver it on Monday between 9am and 1pm. I said that is an awfully long interval, but hey how can I argue when I work from home. Anyway, 3:30pm rolls around and no laptop and no phone call to say they are running late. I call Dell that night and they say the usual "We are so sorry for the inconvenience. Can we arrange an after hours delivery on Tues? The courier will be there between 5pm and 9pm" Whatever, sure...why not? Needless to say, last night I went to bed at 10pm with no laptop. I am waiting for Dell to open up so I can tear them a new one. I hope that this whole delivery thing is just some kind of "comedy of errors" but I have a sneaky suspicion it is just pure incompetence.

The thing that gets me is this...why does the delivery industry act as if they operate in some parallel universe? I mean that, if we say to a business colleague "I will be there at noon" and don't show up, it would be extremely rude and unprofessional. We would never stand for it, nor would we do it ourselves. Why do we let the delivery companies get away with it? What makes them so different? Ah, the question for my next PhD!