They Need To Filter Their Deliveries A Little Better

For Christmas, my mother ordered some blue light-filtering glasses online as a gift for my dad. Package theft isn’t a major concern in our area, but some delivery drivers had been leaving packages by the garage door, so she chose an option for the driver to take photos of the delivered packages so we’d know for sure when they arrived.

Lo and behold, she gets a photo of the box with the glasses on a neighbor’s porch across the street. No big deal, though it is odd that the neighbor doesn’t call us about it or drop it off. Once my mom figures out which house it is, she calls to ask for it. At first, our neighbor is genuinely confused, though.

Neighbor: “I didn’t get any mistaken packages! What was in it?”

Mom: “A pair of blue light-filtering glasses.”

Neighbor: “Oh! I know what happened!”

Her daughter and son-in-law had been visiting from out of state, and in a total coincidence, he had ordered the exact same glasses to their house! The neighbors were getting a lot of packages at the time, so they hadn’t bothered checking the address before opening it. When they opened the box, he figured they were the ones he ordered. By the time Mom called, he’d already returned to his home state, taking the glasses with him.

Our neighbor was mortified and apologized profusely. My mom was totally understanding, and I think she just took the pair the neighbor’s son-in-law ordered when it arrived or ordered another pair. The glasses were fairly cheap and not a “major” gift, just something she ordered on a whim, so even if she hadn’t been able to replace them it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Still, what are the odds that they’d deliver it to someone who ordered the same thing?