Hope everything is ok, @rosered55. I have a package being delivered tomorrow. Hope there is no bear in the driveway.
I am just getting used to the alerts the camera is sending me. I’ve gotten spiders and moths and grasshopper/katydid-looking things hanging around the camera at night, and then the other day it notified me that there was a person seen walking to my front steps. It took me a minute to realize it was ME, brining in the paper!
Funny. But he could get to the porch but not bring the package? Maybe it was food?
My story isn’t funny. One December-January, we got so snowed in we never used the back door. In Feb, we discovered a giant box protruding from a melting heap of snow. A Christmas present from SIL. She never believed my explanation. UPS had not left a front door note. Luckily, the gifts were something durable.
We had a giant fiasco with FedEx ground trashing not one but two Toto toilets. Mister diligently returned both the original and the replacement to Lowes. The boxes looked like they were airdropped without a parachute. Were they testing a drone delivery? I dunno. We got our toilet from Terry Love’s (the Toto Guru) garage.
I usually have no problem as far as damaged packages with Fed Ex or the Post Office, (PO is usually late however), but UPS must airdrop as BunsenBurner suggested. This happens both in FL and in CT.
My delivery nightmare was the UPS truck pulling up in our cup-de-sac one Christmas Eve, stop, and then turn around and leave. Email sails our package was out for delivery, but quitting time is quitting time.
We bought an expensive rug while on vacation and it was being shipped to our house. We were young and just bought the house. After 5 or 6 days, we wondered what happened to our rug, called, and they said it was delivered 4 days earlier. ?? We walked around the house and there it was, a lumpy heap, on the patio by the back door. We were lucky it hadn’t rained and the rug was fine, but boy were we inexperienced with deliveries!
We have very patient and friendly UPS / FedEx / USPS drivers. I use them to socialize our dogs, who both hate the car. DH and I order things we need anyway spaced out a couple times a week, and bingo, new person introductions. The dogs are indoors or leashed and learn that people coming to the house need not result in play time or flipping out, but instead curiosity leavened with civility.
Our little 20lb dog has a deep bark like an 80 pound pit bull, and goes nuts like cujo anytime anybody comes up to the house. But she’s literally all bark and no bite, and will roll over and present her tummy at the slightest friendly gesture.
So one day a delivery guy comes up to our courtyard gate and our dog happens to be running around in the courtyard. She goes full cujo, barking, snarling, growling, etc. W walks out to the gate and the delivery guy says, “hmm, she actually looks friendly”. He proceeds to hold his hand out for our would-be cujo to sniff, and our dog immediately sits, shuts up, and meekly sticks her head out through the bars of the gate to get her ears scratched.
Some guard dog indeed. But a very perceptive delivery guy for sure!
I send a number of care packages to kids (my kid, cousin’s kids, kids of friends) at boarding school and college. Last year, more than half of these packages did not reach their intended recipient – I sent them via Priority Mail with tracking. They ended up arriving at some big sorting facility in Philadelphia, or Springfield, or Buffalo, and then the trail went cold. Filing for a refund was an annoying process. I use UPS now, which seems much more reliable…and I am convinced that those postal sorting facilities employ not just contraband-sniffing dogs, but cookie-sniffing dogs too.
Our very best package delivery and receipt story. Our kid was in the Peace Corps, and we sent a package every single month she was gone to this third world country. She received all but one of the packages.
FIve years later…five years…that package was returned to our house. It had gotten to the country. God knows where it was…but when they went to deliver it to her P.O. box there, she was no longer a recipient…so they sent it back to us…the senders!
Pretty amazing. And it was in excellent condition.
@Publisher if your question #11 is about my post, I swear on a stack of dog training manuals, I’m not “that person” – “Oh, it’s OK, s/he’s friendly!!!”
I use the term “socialization” not in the sense of “yay, you get to make friends with anyone who comes to the house!” but rather “you learn to comfortably encounter strangers and let them go about their business while you confidently go about yours.”
@cameo43 My care packages were usually home-baked – the huge pan of granola that takes a couple of hours to bake, etc. We must have been lucky, because I can’t remember any that didn’t make it – I would have been really torqued.
