A strange and disturbing battle of wits has developed between me and my neighborhood UPS delivery guy. It seems that the standard customer-delivery guy relationship has inexplicably changed over the past several months. My expectations have remained the same: I buy things from various places, and the delivery guy brings them to my home and/or home office. Usually there is someone here to take delivery, but if there isn’t, they have been explicitly authorized to leave items at the door. This has all worked out brilliantly over the past ten years. Everybody is a winner: I get my stuff in a timely manner, and UPS gets paid.
Now it seems that this successful relationship has changed into a competition with winners and losers. He wins if he can put two ‘attempted delivery’ tags on my door, which then obliges me to drive 20 miles to the UPS depot to pick up my item in person. I win if I can catch him sneaking up to the door and thus force him to give up the box. The game has escalated over time. At first he’d ring the doorbell and then sprint to his truck to get away before I could reach the door. I countered this tactic by not running to the door, but by immediately going to a 2nd floor window and yelling out that I’m home and will be at the door in a few seconds. He doesn’t use the doorbell anymore; he gently knocks on the door (really more of a soundless brushing of the wood) before heading back to the truck. I’ve now trained our dog to bark hysterically at anyone or anything heading up our driveway ; kind of annoying, but it gives me enough warning to get to the door.
He is now resorting to psychological warfare – delivering a package to a neighbor, which sets off my dog alarm, but also lulls me into thinking he doesn’t have anything for my address that day. Only later do I find the familiar note pasted to my front door, telling me I have only one more chance to catch him and avoid the long drive to their warehouse. Not sure how I’m going to counter this one. I may have to booby-trap the walkway in such a way as to incapacitate him long enough to allow me to get outside and take delivery of the package. This may have a negative impact on my reputation in the neighborhood; I don’t want to trap Girl Scouts, Trick or Treaters, or stray dogs, but it might be the price that has to be paid to ensure that I get my stuff from Newegg or Amazon on time.