There's a related set of stories Avery Pennarun tells about the culture shock of being an American in Korea. One of them is about some online ordering service you can use that's sort of like Amazon. With Amazon, when you order something, you get a box with multiple bar/QR/other codes on it and, when you open it up, there's another box inside that has at least one other code on it. Of course the other box needs the barcode because it's being shipped through some facility at-scale where no one knows what the box is or where it needs to go and the inner box also had to go through some other kind of process and it also needs to be able to be scanned by a checkout machine if the item is sold at a retailer. Inside the inner box is the item. If you need to return the item, you put the item back into its barcoded box and then put that box into the shipping box and then slap another barcode onto the shipping box and then mail it out.