In as little as 45 minutes

[Bella_Vixen]

My pharmacy did not have a couple of my meds in stock and had to order them in on the next day's truck. They called me and said, "We have your prescriptions!" I said, "Thank you, I'll be there shortly." They said, "See ya in a bit."

I get there only to find out that "We have your prescriptions" means that they were on the truck that came in, NOT that they were ready to pick up.

I would have been a bit upset at this. Why would they call if they weren't ready to be pick up?

[EricKei]

The post office is known for doing that, esp. here -- on DYI Metered Mail (i.e., an office prints its own postage in-house), if you print FC postage on Wednesday and don't bring it over until Thursday, it makes them look like they took too long processing the mail. So, they just update the postmark.

[Jay 2K Winger]

One of the GRATE SEKRITS OF KUSDUMBER SERVISS is to Underpromise and Overdeliver. If you know there's no way it'll take more than half an hour (barring unforeseen circumstances), quote them a 35-40 minute delivery time; a 36-minute actual delivery time due to, say, a traffic snarl, will be fine in that case. Most of the time, you'll be "pleasantly early" ^_^ And I can back up the inverse from personal experience: If you quote 30 minutes and it takes 36, you're unreasonably late, and possibly even "lazy"

This is how Mr. Scott of the Starship Enterprise got his reputation. He inflated his repair estimates by a huge margin, so when he got the warp drive fixed in ten minutes instead of two hours, he was seen as a miracle worker.