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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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