The holiday hideout

Devoid of porch pirates, snoopy spouses and missed deliveries, the office has become the go-to depot for everyone’s holiday shopping

CHANCES ARE, SOME readers out there spent at least a little time at work online shopping last week, what with all the Cyber Monday deals out there (we’re not judging!). And while the end of those sales may have cooled your spending, the weeks after Black Friday and Cyber Monday start to get hectic for one particular part of the office: the mailroom.

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Data from Envoy found that it’s not Black Friday that slams corporate mailrooms. Instead, about a week after Black Friday, the action starts in the mailroom, where deliveries jump 60 per cent above average, and the office overall sees a 30 per cent week-over-week spike in packages. And in the weeks to come, it only gets busier. By early December, the average corporate mailroom sees 75 per cent more deliveries than the yearly average, and 40 per cent more than the average week in Q4.

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Envoy’s explanation isn’t that businesses get in on deal hunting, but that their employees use the office mailroom as a place to get their stuff delivered.

“It turns out people aren’t just working form the office in December. They’re also using it as a holiday hideout — stashing gifts away from curious family members, dodging porch pirates and making sure those Black Friday deals arrive safely,” Envoy wrote. “Every year we studied — across 2018-2019 and 2021-2024 — the busiest week for office deliveries lands in early to mid-December, not the week of Christmas itself.”

This is a growing dynamic for offices, which have become the destination for more and more ecommerce in recent years, but which aren’t necessarily set up for the sheer volume of stuff being ordered.

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“Office managers and front desk associates are being overwhelmed by the sheer number of deliveries per day given that there’s no place to put them,” reads a blog by Parcel Pending, a commercial locker company, which point out that modern offices, which no longer have as many dedicated mail clerks as they used to, don’t have easy solutions. Front desk staff don’t like it, hiring additional staff is expensive and banning employees from using the office as a delivery destination seems a little heavy-handed.

The silver lining? It’s short-lived. Just as quickly as office mailrooms get slammed, the volume falls off a cliff. “People tend to handle post-holiday returns from home, not from their desks,” Envoy concluded. “After Christmas, the corporate mailroom goes from bustling to nearly silent.”