Then one day I caught a driver there and asked him about it.

“Oh, we don’t provide supplies there anymore,” he replied. “People just steal them.”

When I called FedEx again, they told me that was absolutely not true and that they would contact the terminal manager and have them refill the box.

Several months later, and no supplies, another post office patron next to me in line suggested that someone should just order free supplies on their account and refill the box.

What a brilliant idea! Not only would I be helping all the other FedEx customers who got stuck with no envelopes or airbills, but I could poke fun at FedEx in the process. So, I did it.

Well, my supplies lasted about two weeks before they ran out. I ordered more and restocked the box. But to my surprise, the supplies never ran out.

I had secretly marked my supplies and discovered that someone else was reloading the box! Then one day, the new type of FedEx Pak appeared. Could it be? Did I convince FedEx to restock the box? It’s been supplied for 2 months straight.

After some experimenting, I found that the best way to do it was to put the camera on a tripod, place the laptop, zoom in on the laptop screen, mark the exact location of the laptop, remove the laptop, shoot the scene. Load that picture as the background on the laptop and put the laptop back on the desk. Zoom out and shoot the final picture. There are slight alignment issues that cause it to have a “refracted glass” look that I think adds realism to the illusion. I found the results looked better than shooting a picture with and without the laptop and trying to “punch out” the screen. The icons on the laptop screen look much better this way.

The illusion, of course, only works when you stand at the correct angle. If you still don’t get what’s going on, this picture with the laptop turned should help you figure it out.