Trust is hard to come by and easy to lose.

When a friendly gesture goes awry, this neighbor lets fate take its course with a porch pirate.

Let’s see how the story went down!

AITA for letting a porch pirate steal upstairs neighbor’s “expensive” packages?

I (24M) live in a duplex. Been here for the last 5 years. My building has a single front door that both apartments use, that enters into a small foyer with stairs about 4ft away or so that lead up to the apartment upstairs.

When I moved in, I had friendly, slightly older neighbors (I’ll call Jack and Jill) that didn’t cause any issues, were relatively quiet and when packages were delivered for me; Jack would bring them inside, place them in the foyer and I started doing the same for them. Never had any issues with that and they would thank me and I thanked them.

What a lovely mutual gesture.

Unfortunately, in February of 2022; Jill passed away. Jack moved out 9 months later. January 2023, new neighbor (NN) moved in.

She’s around 40ish in age, I guess. She’s relatively quiet, doesn’t cause issues, I’ve barely had a conversation outside of a greeting in the evening when I come home from work. She’s got a lovely Golden Retriever which occasionally barks but meh; it’s a dog, dogs bark. No real big issues with her.

I continued to do what I did for Jack and Jill with deliveries; bringing her boxes inside, leaving them in the foyer for her. She never returned the gesture, which is fine since I’ve started ordering less and less.

Little one-sided, but all right.

She never said anything about it until about the month of April. I go out to get the mail and see four packages; two fairly large ones and two smaller ones, all addressed to her and pick the two large ones up, carrying them inside when she comes down the stairs with two other women.

She asks what I was doing and I tell them that I was just bringing them inside. She says that they were on their way down to get them, so I hand over the two I had while one of the ladies retrieves the other two.

I turn, head back inside my apartment and as they’re going back upstairs, NN says “I Can’t believe he tried to steal these. I should call the cops.” with the other two agreeing.

No way.

I wanted to go tell her that again, I wasn’t stealing anything but decided to let it go.

Fast forward to yesterday, I’m off work and watching tv when at 2:36p.m., I see UPS pull up. The driver puts two packages on the porch. I go check the mail and the boxes are for NN. I leave them on the porch, go back inside and end up falling asleep watching t.v.

Around 4p.m; I’m awakened by NN knocking. I opened the door and she asks if I have her packages. I say no, I don’t have them. NN says the app shows that they were delivered this afternoon. I said I saw them on the porch earlier but left them alone.

Serves her right.

NN got upset at me, said since one of the boxes had something expensive in it and since I was home; I could’ve bought them inside the foyer like I’ve done before.

I told her that I didn’t want to be accused of being a thief again. She called me an AH, repeated that one of the packages had expensive stuff inside and then stomped upstairs, slamming her door.

So AITA for not bringing her deliveries inside and leaving them to be porch pirated?

Hey, sometimes letting karma work its magic is more satisfying than a confrontation, right?

What’s the Redditors’ take on this porch piracy payback?

This person says the neighbor got what she deserved.

This person says this is absolutely not OP’s fault.

And this person agrees, too. NOT the AH, at all.

Looks like this neighbor’s trust issues just cost her a couple of deliveries.

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.