Don’t let your mouth write a check your rear can’t cash.” That’s a phrase I used to hear in the blue collar bars near the steel mills outside of Youngstown, Ohio. Mostly, it referred to guys who shot off their mouths after one too many boilermakers.
I was thinking of that after reading about the holiday shipping snafus that left thousands of customers with empty stockings on Christmas morning while their packages stacked up in UPS and FedEx logistics hubs. What I wondered is whether our retail customers – and the order fulfillment systems we’ve created for them – have written checks our rears can’t cash? I’m also wondering if there isn’t a cautionary note there for the new frontier of same-day delivery.