July 26, 2024 at 9:21 pm

Man’s Misdelivered Package Led To Days Of Unanswered Knocks, And Escalated Into Threats From Their Uncooperative Neighbor

by Benjamin Cottrell

Source: Pexels/Mike Jones, Reddit/AITA

Great neighbors are neighbors you can count on, in the olden days, to lend you a cup of sugar or, in modern days, to return lost packages to their rightful owner.

However, this man’s quest for package recovery didn’t quite go as planned when after many attempts, the situation turned explosive.

Find out how it all went down.

AITA for knocking on a neighbor’s door and expecting an answer?

A few days ago, I realized recently that I didn’t get a package I was expecting.

I checked the tracking information and saw that it had been delivered a week ago to the person with my apartment number in the other building in my apartment complex.

Should be easy enough to retrieve, right?

So I went over to the other building at around 6pm, ensured I was at the right place using the photo taken by the delivery person, and knocked on the door. No answer.

That’s fine. I figured they must be out, so I decided to come back the next day.

Wrong.

The next day, there’s still no answer.

Then on the third day, I can hear the television inside the apartment. Aha!

He’s expecting an answer this time.

So I knock on the door and… nothing. No response.

I wait a few minutes, then knock on the door again.

He tries to justify the lack of response.

I figure maybe they were in the middle of something, or not appropriately dressed to answer the door. Still no answer.

I wait a few minutes and knock again. This goes on for maybe 10 minutes or so. Admittedly, at this point I was already peeved from being completely ignored, and also having had to spend several days on this.

Then the situation escalates.

So about the fourth or fifth time knocking on the door, I suddenly hear a woman screaming at me from inside, “IF YOU TOUCH MY ****ING DOOR AGAIN, I’M CALLING 911.”

But he has a good reason.

I try to explain that I had a package delivered to her apartment, to which she screamed, “I NEVER GOT YOUR ****ING PACKAGE! NOW LEAVE, OR I’M CALLING THE POLICE!!”

I told her I had a photo of the package delivered to her door. She paused, then went back to screaming that I was scaring her, and that she was calling the police.

He tries other means of recovery.

I told her fine, go ahead, tell them a neighbor is knocking on her door looking for a package and see what 911 has to say about that. I left and went to the office and explained the situation.

The office emailed her, along with my photo of the package, at which point she said she did get the package, but had her boyfriend place it in the mailroom right outside their elevator. (This is not where packages go, as it’s unsecured. There’s a package room maybe 50 feet away he could have delivered it to instead, or dropped it off with the office about 75 feet away.)

The situation is a foregone conclusion at this point.

Unsurprisingly, my package was gone by this point, having either been stolen or discarded.

So my question is: AITA for knocking and expecting an answer?

What a frustrating ordeal.

What did Reddit make of all this?

This user doesn’t believe the grouchy neighbor’s story for one second.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Many people are wary about opening their door to strangers.

Source: Reddit/AITA

No one in this situation was acting very neighborly.

Source: Reddit/AITA

What’s so scary about a knock?

Source: Reddit/AITA

It’s a scary world out there, but it’s sad when you can’t even trust your neighbors.

He’s not going to be asking this neighbor for a cup of sugar anytime soon.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.