This kinda thing is extremely good and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on in a bigger way. Many (most?) purchases are made online these days, but when you do so you have to make one of a couple of awkward choices:

1. request a delivery at work, let the receptionists at your office sign for the package and very politely thank them each time (and don't do this too often)

2. place the order to be delivered at your home address, knowing that you won't be there and that you'll have to pick up the "you were out..." slip, and duck out of work and cross town later in the week to the post-office sometime during opening hours and suffer the queues there.

The reason I use the word "awkward" is that I feel like I'm misusing some facilities no matter what I do (expecting a receptionist to handle my packages, or making a postman bring a package all the way to my flat and then all the way back home and fill out forms etc).

These temp lockers are such a great idea.

> request a delivery at work, let the receptionists at your office sign for the package and very politely thank them each time (and don't do this too often)

Everyone in my office does this, although we don't have a dedicated receptionist and the job normally falls to the office manager instead. It doesn't even cross my mind as a misuse of company resources. Is this something that would be considered inappropriate in other places?

It depends, I think in a larger office it can get a bit out of hand. My previous workplace was a few hundred people and the pile of packages was a little shocking, especially around christmas time. My current workplace the downstairs reception is shared between a number of companies, so they're not even our employees which makes it a bit worse.

It could be that this is all fine and I'm overthinking it - so maybe take what I"m saying with a pinch of salt :-)

As a counter-example: we have a receptionist and a dedicated mailroom which is staffed for full business hours. I do imagine it gets nuts around christmas, but it's essentially an office perk / honestly I'd consider it something that should be expected by default - the alternative is, as mentioned, home delivery when you're not home, which is ridiculously ineffective and has problems with theft.

Fully agree. Unfortunately the lockers are not very popular yet in France. But I've seen a few added in the last months in my area, hope it catches the steam, because it's way better.

The problem though is that most of the time I can not choose the delivery company, and I've only seen La Poste having the lockers.

With the all the home deliveries that people have these days I think it should be mandatory for all new constructed condos etc to have delivery lockers. The item gets delivered to the locker the code is messaged to you retrieve when you get back home. The current place I am living in has the security gate intercom dial my handphone. So for any package delivery I tell the guy I will open the door for him but I am not at home so to leave the item outside my apartment door.

We have a few Amazon Lockers in Paris and the suburbs. It's awesome. A lot better than the usual "Relais Colis".

Just flash the barcode from the email, and it opens the appropriate locker. It even lets you open multiple ones with a single barcode if you received multiple packages the same day.

I'm curious, is it uncommon to have packages delivered to the mailroom at your place of work? That's what I've done for the last 4 years and I've never had a problem.

It is not uncommon, but at a mid-sized company it is a bit problematic: when the receptionist has to handle private parcels for a couple of individuals, that is OK; but when there are 100-200 employees and they regularly order non-work related stuff at their company address, it becomes a burden on the receptionist, burden that is not part of what the company pays him for.

So :

* small company where everyone takes care of (his own) deliveries: OK.

* smallish company company where there is a receptionist: OK because it does not happen too often.

* middle-sized company: not OK.

* large company with a dedicated mail/parcel/delivery service: I guess it depends on formal work agreements.

-We solved this in a simple manner at a former employer - we just had everybody who wanted something sent to work have it addressed to such-and-such, room 40.

Room 40 was a bench behind the warehouse reception.

Of course, there are potential pitfalls here - say, assuming your colleagues to be honest, for instance - but to the best of my knowledge, we never lost a parcel in years. (Which is more than could be said for anything entering the murky depths of our ERP system...)

At AOL in late 2001 they insisted that employees cease receiving non-work packages at work. The legit concern was the anthrax being mailed to DC area offices. That was also just past "peak AOL" so I was soon freed from this problem, with a decent sverance to boot.

I have found ordering from B&M's via their websites and picking the thing up at the store bypasses this whole problem.

I experienced the receptionist losing track of my stuff once and it was a really uncomfortable situation because, obviously, you're still colleagues and you don't want to get too pushy, but at the same time, where the hell is the stuff I paid for? After that I stopped having stuff delivered to my office.

And anyway you may not want everyone to know what you are buying.

I've rented a mailbox at a private post office for years to do this. It's basically a subcontracted receiving department, and they can deal with parcels from any vendor or courier for me.

Maybe... I've used them three times, I think. Once everything was good, the next time I couldn't retrieve the package because the touchscreen and barcode reader were malfunctioning, and then the third time I got someone else's package and mine vanished into thin air. (I was able to dox the other person and leave their package where they could get it though.) The company where I work has essentially the same thing, and seemingly more reliable, if I'm willing to wait an extra day for it to get through their system.

I almost never have to return anything but the one time I had a defective item I decided to use a locker for the return exchange and it never worked, they were always all full (London, UK) so then I had to end up going to a post office anyway.

Every time I've looked for one in NYC, there are none around within 5 miles.

I mean, most things I don't need to sign for and I can just pick them up on my doorstep when I get home, which is way more convenient than that.