A year into the coronavirus pandemic, a Redditor shared a hilarious but distressing photo of an outrageously packaged Amazon order.
A large parcel — perhaps as big as 24 inches by 12 inches by 24 inches — arrived at their door with just four small packages of Crystal Light Peach Mango Green Tea inside.
"It was a tight squeeze but Amazon managed to fit all of these into the box!" the poster sarcastically wrote.
One user noted the poster shouldn't have ordered a few grocery store items from the online retailer.
"I had ordered 3 other things and they each came in different packages every though I have an Amazon delivery day and I ask that they use as few packages as possible," the poster responded. "Plus, I can only order 4 at a time now for some reason, when I used to be able to order 10! Wish I could still find them in the stores so I don't have to order at all!"
The jokes were plentiful.
"You better check for damages," one commenter wrote. "They really crammed those in there to make them fit, might've messed them up."
Another said: "Everybody hatin' on a free box 'til they gotta move."
In July, Amazon announced it had lowered its carbon pollution for the first time in at least four years, though the company doesn't project it will reach net-zero carbon pollution until 2040. At the time, CNBC reported Amazon was moving toward an electric delivery fleet and was the world's largest corporate buyer of renewable energy.
But the alleged monopoly has other issues. In 2022, Reveal reported Amazon drastically undercounted its carbon footprint, and its employees are notoriously overworked.
Still, the biggest problem might be the industry itself.
The last mile is a well-known delivery hurdle, and researchers have long been trying to clear it, including via drone deliveries, delivery robots, bike messengers, and other personal couriers. Horizon reported in 2020 that 20% to 30% of a city's carbon dioxide pollution comes from door-to-door conveyance.
As far as this fiasco goes, there was a debate about whether an Amazon worker or the vendor was responsible for the oversize box. One commenter who seems to work for Amazon instead blamed the packager.
"It takes two seconds to change it to small box," they wrote. "One more second to get the right tape dispensed. People are f****** lazy and don't care to do this is the correct answer. I run a 250 rate and change box sizes ALL the time for s*** like this. Once again people are just too lazy to care and that's the truth. It's not hard to fix an appropriate box size for items misplaced. The rate you have to run is 190 an hour and that's a f****** cake walk."
Another user noted that at least the carton wasn't made from worse materials: "I'm not complaining about Amazon's boxes until they make em with plastic. Amazon cardboard boxes may create waste, but at least they break down in nature."
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