Y., a very nice but slightly confused customer, wants to send a parcel from Munich to Stuttgart. Rightly, then, she turns to a bike courier service operating in Berlin. No problem: from the office we contact R., another city courier service, which in turn works with S., a Europe-wide express service, which confirms the transport. A few minutes later the phone rings. It's Y. She forgot to mention that the parcel can only be picked up from 5 pm. No problem, I call R., R. calls S. back, and everything is fine again.
It's 2 pm, and this time it's an email from Y. that disturbs the cosmic balance. The parcel is in a bar in Munich, but nobody will be there before 5:30 pm. At such short notice it's hard to organise the pickup, but I'll try, I tell Y. Then R. calls S. again. R. calls back: no luck. I write to Y.: no answer. I call Y., who, a new element of surprise, is just boarding a plane and will soon be off the radar. She says I should contact B. “Who is B.?” “The bar manager in Munich.” “Ah!” “I'll email you the number.”
I call B., who under no circumstances can be at the bar at 5 pm. No, nobody else has the keys. “Give the courier my number.” “That doesn't change the fact that he might be there at 5:10,” I reply. “Just give him my number.” Then I call R. so that he passes B.'s number on to S. Now all we can do is wait and keep our fingers crossed. And here I think about how strange it is how much attention a handful of people can give a single parcel that most of them will never see, never touch, and whose contents will, above all, stay unknown to them forever. The thought doesn't last long. It's 6 pm and time to clock off.
B.'s calls around 7 pm go unanswered and will only worry those of us who check the messages first thing in the morning. But shortly after the day has begun, and after the head-scratching that goes with it, the notification comes in: the parcel was delivered at 9:25 am.
The Math #26 is part of CROW, the worker-run bike collective that has set itself the goal of replacing cars with bikes: with its own cargo bike courier service, cargo bike sales and bike repairs, for a better quality of life for everyone and without bosses.