If you think about it, it makes sense that retail employees have their own share of encounters with the Stupid Shipping Gang. They open and unpack a lot more boxes than we civilians ever do. Maybe stupid shipping just no longer fazes them.

It bothers reader C., though. He works at a Radio Shack store and sent us these examples of stupidity.

If you are a fan of the Stupid Shipping Gang, then you should get a job at RadioShack.

I work for a RadioShack franchise store (Yeah, yeah, I know…”you got questions, we got blank stares”). Every week we receive shipments from their regional warehouses to replenish our store inventory. Even though I have been working with RadioShack for nearly seven years, I’m still dumbfounded by my semi-regular encounters with the handiwork of their Stupid Shipping Gang.

There are two primary sins that RadioShack’s SSG tend to engage in. The most common one is the Comically Oversized Box. Here is a typical example of what I normally see from the RadioShack SSG. Naturally, the rest of the box was stuffed with an entire rainforest worth of wadded paper. It should be stated that we do reuse as much of the packaging material as possible, so at least it’s not a complete waste.

The second (Luckily less common) sin of the SSG is to apply shipping labels directly to the retail packaging of large-box items (Computers, printers, TVs, etc). This by itself isn’t wrong. But, it’s the fact that they sometimes stick the labels on the FRONT of the boxes that causes trouble. Here is perhaps the most egregious example of bad shipping label placement that we’ve recently received from the SSG.

Comically Oversized Boxes are just funny and wasteful, but bad shipping label placement can be downright frustrating, especially if the labels are covering product photos and information. Oh, and did I mention that the shipping labels RadioShack uses in their warehouses are non-removable? Well, to be more accurate, the labels are somewhat removable…but the adhesive is not. Thus, the labels cannot be removed without either leaving behind bits of the labels, a sticky residue, or potentially damaging the box.

I just thought I’d share my SSG experiences. Hopefully, but unlikely, one of the revolving-door CEO’s from RadioShack will finally come to recognize these problems and actually take steps to help correct them. Yeah, right…

It’s one thing, C. notes, to ship an item in the product box to a customer. It’s another to slap a label on the front of the box and expect the store to stick it on the shelf like that.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.