Name developer and language observer Nancy Friedman tweeted this curious tracking notice from UPS: “Your package has experienced an exception.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Tracking Notice Tweet”
Grant, suppose your company is an overnight delivery service and you need to figure out language for letting people know that something has happened to a package that they were sending.
What kind of language would you put on the tracking notice?
If something happened to their package and you can’t find it?
I don’t know, accident in transit, something like that?
Accident in transit.
Lost in transit.
Nancy Friedman, who has the blog Fritter Nancy, wrote that she got one that said, your package has experienced an exception.
Oh, it must be a software error, actually.
Oh, you think?
Yeah, because an exception is a software error where one process doesn’t go as planned and returns an error message rather than a result.
Okay.
Well, maybe that explains it.
It looks pretty funny just all by itself.
Your package has experienced an exception.
Yeah, that’s strange.
Yeah, I wonder if it was like a template where your package was supposed to be followed by your package is now available or your package is in Tennessee.
Yeah.
But instead, the software just substituted the error message.
Possible.
