He Put Up Clear House Numbers to Help Delivery Drivers—Then a Petty Neighbor Kept Tearing Them Down
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Imagine having trouble getting anything delivered to your front door because you live in a neighborhood where finding your house is kind of tricky.
If you came up with an easy solution to the problem to help delivery drivers find you, would you run with it even if you didn’t exactly have the right to do it, or would you continue to deal with confused delivery drivers?
In this story, one person who lives in a townhouse is dealing with this exact situation. He understands why it’s tricky finding his front door, and he also discovered an easy way to make it easier.
Unfortunately, someone in the neighborhood keeps sabotaging his plan.
Keep reading for all the details.
AITA for starting a silent neighborhood battle
I live in a block of townhouses where most are street fronting, but five of them are only accessible by going down a driveway.
The street number of the townhouses accessible only via the driveway is also not visible from the street – the dwellings either side of the driveway display their own street numbers, and visitors are expected to look at each of them and then come to their own conclusion that other dwellings must exist down the driveway.
This was already frustrating for us pre-pandemic, but became even more frustrating once we required contactless deliveries and nobody could work out where our house was.
They had an idea that worked.
As renters, we had no right to do this, but with the cost being a grand total of $12, we bought some numbers from the local hardware store (closely resembling the numbers used on all other townhouses in the group) and placed them on a communal post at the driveway entrance to indicate more townhouses existed down the driveway.
We received an uber eats delivery that night that made it to our door step without any intervention from ourselves for the first time ever (happy days!)
The next day, the numbers were removed.
As we had stuck them on loosely, and there is a school only a few doors down, we assumed they had fallen off and kids had made off with them, so bought some more and stuck them on with better adhesive.
But it all happened again.
Again, an online purchase arrived that afternoon with no treks to the end of the driveway required.
The next day the numbers had disappeared again, along with a significant chunk of post that they were adhered to.
The post needed to be repaired at great cost to the owner group, which I feel bad about, but the next bit is the interesting bit: after the post was repaired SOMEONE ELSE started putting up house numbers on the post.
And whoever has been taking them down, keeps just chiselling bits of post away.
This is unfortunate.
The owner group keeps having to pay for repairs, just for people to keep putting house numbers up again.
Tonnes of passive aggressive anonymous notes in letter boxes have been sent throughout our group.
I feel bad about starting the neighborhood war, and know that technically I had no right to do it – but I don’t feel mine was an ‘AH’ move. I can’t even think why someone keeps defacing property like they keep doing.
Who is removing the numbers and why? Clearly, OP isn’t the only resident who finds the numbers beneficial.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
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This is good advice.
This person has a theory about who’s removing the numbers.
Here’s another suggestion.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who escalates her issue to the state when a third family is added to a shared neighborhood well.
Another person thinks a note might help.
Whoever is removing the numbers must not live down that driveway. Maybe leaving a note would help. Maybe contacting whoever is in charge of the owners group to explain would help.
The person removing the numbers is the problem. Clearly, these townhomes need to be better marked so people can find them.
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