Dear Evelyn...

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but today we ran out of baby pie boxes at PJP.  And by "ran out", I mean we actually don't have a single baby pie box available for use.  And the running out isn't really the surprising or interesting part because that has happened to us before, but then I realized we are also out of our emergency folding-required baby pie boxes.  And then panic ensued. As the Executive President of PJP Procurement, I fail miserably (though, I just gave myself that title, so what did you expect?).  I typically try to reorder supplies when we open the last box of whatever we are using (it is a very strategic and well thought out plan for inventory management, no?)  At some point last week, I missed the memo that we had started to use the very last of our cases of baby pie boxes.  In case you are curious, I order our baby pie boxes online from a company called "Mr. Takeout Bags".  I don't understand the name of the company at all...why the "Mr." part?.  That said, they have the boxes we like at a fraction of the cost of other online retailers and so, I guess they can call themselves whatever they want.  The site does offer the nice ability to "rapid re-order" product by logging in and viewing your previous orders and then just re-ordering with the click of a button.

And now that I just typed that, I realize that I have less of a reason to run out of boxes given the easy of getting more.  Pathetic.  So pathetic.

Anyway, I realized today that since I started ordering from this company on June 20th, we have ordered 3,000 baby pie boxes.  That averages to around 1,000 baby pies a month going out the door at PJP.

And if you are wondering why I don't buy 3,000 boxes at a time and spare myself the frustration, I'll tell you why.  1) We are hard pressed to store 500 boxes without tripping over them.  3,000 would be impossible in our current space.  2)  If I were prepared enough to order 3,000 at a time, it would be like I didn't even know myself any longer and I just can't deal with that right now.

After ordering from Mr. Takeout Bags, you immediately get an email from Evelyn Kurianowicz thanking you for your order.  And I have so many emails from her now in my pjpies.com account that I feel like I should respond to Evelyn and tell her thanks and ask her how her day is going, like we are long lost friends.

In all respect to Evelyn and team, the boxes usually arrive pretty quickly.  They left a UPS processing facility in Kentucky at 9:26 pm this evening and now I'm left wondering if you can go from Kentucky to Columbia by tomorrow for delivery.  And I'm guessing probably not.

And this is just my long story to say that if you stop by PJP Buttonwood tomorrow for a baby pie or two, prepared to receive them packaged oddly.  I have the feeling Evelyn would be so disappointed in me...