Just the work that the UPS store employees have to undertake to answer the phone, say hello, field a question from a "customer" (who will never pay anything) an

Just the work that the UPS store employees have to undertake to answer the phone, say hello, field a question from a "customer" (who will never pay anything) and answer "yes you can just bring it down to my store and put it in the box and it will magically get back to UPS" is absolutely mind-boggling to me, considering that it happens absolutely gratis and amazon is an enormous company. These UPS shops are, as far as I can tell (through knowledge gained from conversations with the owner of my local one) individually owned. There is no packaging, as far as I could tell; all the stuff that showed up while I was standing there was boxed and labelled and ready to ship.