We thought we'd coined a new word today...

That word is "crapaging".

I discovered after a quick search that we were not the first to coin this term. It has been put into print before in the Urban Dictionary.

Crapaging :

Any packaged goods of a very poor quality, use of inappropriate materials or lack of security in any shape or form.

Examples:

"Have you seen the crapaging on this bl**dy parcel?"
"Can you scrape around for some crapaging for this one, mate?"

We figure that this can be either a noun or a verb - the material used in the act or the actual activity.

About a month ago, we got what is probably a very high-tech and expensive one-off carbon fiber enclosure for an instrument that will be mounted on the top of an airplane somewhere. it came in a plywood crate with wood trim - a simple, but decently made and rugged piece of packaging. The interior was a totally different situation. Inside of the box was a combination of, well, junk that someone seemed to have put into the box for padding so that they would simply be rid of it.

This included the following items:

• Packing peanuts (anathema!)
• Assorted pieces of bubble wrap (both size and type) well contaminated with packing tape in inconvenient ways.
• Brown craft paper
• Rigid closed-cell foam from some other packaging
• Absorbent shop towels used for mopping up oil on drums
• A folded-up Fed-Ex mailing box
• A variety of pieces of thin cardboard
• A used, padded mailing envelope.

I re-packaged the enclosure today to return to the customer. I must admit that I did re-use some of the original packaging. This includes the rigid foam, bubble wrap (sans tape) and the packing peanuts, if only to be rid of them - the packing peanuts, that is!