Living in the year 2022, especially in a rural location two hours from the nearest BestBuy, means shopping on-line. Our Amazon guy knows us by name, and knows where to put packages by the back door. He’s almost like an old friend.
Purolator though can’t even manage to find our front door, even though we’ve left the light on.
Every morning they claim that my new Dell laptop has been loaded on to a vehicle for delivery, and every afternoon they sadly tell us that it has been “delayed in transit due to disruption.” Although at one point on Tuesday they claimed that the delay was due to COVID-19 in the warehouse.
I have driven the 45 minutes from Bridgewater, Nova Scotia to Liverpool, Nova Scotia more than a few times. You can trust me that the roads are wide, and easy to drive and never, ever that crowded. Assuming that the laptop had actually made it onto the truck, there’s no possible way that it was “delayed in transit.”
Instead what’s really happening is that Purolator drivers are almost certainly using Google Maps to give them GPS directions to our address. The problem is that Google Maps does not believe that Lighthouse Road, Liverpool, Nova Scotia exists. Instead they insist that the road outside of our door is called Breakwater Road.
In theory Purolator could just phone me and I would tell them how to get here. For that matter they could stop literally anyone on the street in Liverpool and ask them for directions. Or stop at the Liverpool Post Office - yes we still have a real post office, not a “retail outlet” at the back of a drug store!) and ask them.
Instead, and I swear this is true, they enter “34 Lighthouse Rd” into their smartphone, and are handed directions to “34 Lightouse Route” in town, get confused, and drive back to Bridgewater.
And honestly, in an age when everyone relies on GPS for directions, and when it’s assumed that Google just knows all, it’s a reasonable tool to rely on. Except when it isn’t.
And, before you ask, we have asked Google several times to fix this error on their maps, but get no response. I guess when you are one of the most powerful organisations on the planet you don’t need to bother.
So what I have adopted is what the French call a “Lieu dit.” In France it happens that road names are changed sometimes for clarity or for whatever reason the local government might choose. The problem is that it takes time for other parts of government, and the wider world, to catch up on those changes, so you’ll often see a “Lieu dit” line on an envelope. For instance, in Varaignes our address read:
972 Route du Galop,
Lieu dit Le Fayard
24360 Varaignes France
Route du Galop is the name on the road sign at our turn-off.
Le Fayard is the old name for the road, the farm within whose boundaries we were living, and presumably the family who built it several centuries ago.
Adopting that style for Canada, and Purolator, our delivery address is now:
34 Lighthouse Road
Google Maps: Breakwater Road
Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
Although in fact we take great pride in using the more local town name of Western Head, the birthplace of Terrence “Tiger” Warrington.
In the interest of balance, and because it was on Twitter, Purolator gets the last word
.