grace period




I spend a lot of my time working against deadlines. And as part of that, I've become very familiar with all the local FedEx drop locations and cutoff times - or so I thought. I've located the drop box in an office building close to my gym and the nearest full-service FedEx location. And while my ideal dropoff is a street box near my house with a 5:15pm pickup, if I miss that, I can drive to the Airport office to meet the late cutoff at 6:45pm (of course, thats only 10 minutes away). More often than I'd like, I've barely made that 6:45 cutoff after watching the clock and a progress bar as a dvd burned and a disk surface printed, ready to run to my truck and pray for green lights. Yesterday, I pushed it a little too far, not making it out of my house until 6:40. I went to the office anyway, hoping maybe they'd still take the package. I ran in and asked the guy behind the counter if there was any way my package would still make it - it was only to LA after all - and he said "Sure, as long as its a west coast delivery, you're fine until 8:30." What? Nothing on the website said anything about that! No signs in the office mentioned that! But the drive-thru close at 6:45?! All this time rushing for that 6:45 deadline. So... Now I know. And for any of you on the west coast that do the same thing, I figured I'd post the info here: the latest pickup for West Coast shipments is 8:30pm on weekdays and 6pm on Saturdays (at the LAX Airport location on Hindry). And for those of you somewhere else, well, be sure to ask (like I never did) - maybe you'll save yourself the rush next time - or even make that deadline you thought you missed.
Jon Berry3 Comments