Dad was just in the local Staples, talking with the manager, who told him that last week they processed 35,000 Amazon returns. This is one of those big numbers I have trouble believing.

That Staples is open 8am to 9pm, Monday to Friday, 10am to 9pm on Saturday, and 10am to 8pm on Sunday. That’s 86 hours a week.

35,000 Amazon returns processed in an 86-hour week is 407 per hour (actually, 406.98, but let’s not be too pedantic). That’s 6.78 returns every minute, or one return every 9 seconds. I’ve been to that Staples to send back an Amazon return. From the time the clerk scans my return code to printing out the return sticker, slapping it on the item (or placing the item in a bag and slapping on the label), and then pushing that item aside to move on to the next takes far, FAR longer than 9 seconds. Even when they have two clerks processing those returns, they’re not moving that fast.

I don’t doubt that the manager thought she was reporting a fact to my father. I just don’t believe she (or he) was remembering it properly. Perhaps one of them slipped a decimal point: 3,500 returns in a week is a far more believable number, though even that requires one return every minute and a half the store is open (an 86-hour week is the equivalent of 5,160 minutes open for business).

This is one of those types of big numbers I was talking about in my lecture “Numbers: they’re just too darn big!” and which will be featured in the upcoming book of the same title that I’m working on right now.