Adventures in Mail Delivery - Part 74... Give or take 70.

So, my mail route is made up of 50-some-odd community boxes.  Each one has 8 to 16 mailboxes in it.  They all also have lockers for me to put packages in, so I don't have to take them to people's doors. It's really nice, and it's a secure place to leave a package if no one is home so that it won't be stolen.  However, sometimes packages are too large to fit in the lockers.  Or, sometimes people will not get their mail and the lockers will already be taken.  In this case we have to take the package to the door.  There are several different types of packages when it comes to which we are allowed to leave on your doorstep if you're not home, and which we are not.  A package without any sort of scan on it at all is one we can leave, or a delivery confirmation with a note of "Carrier Leave if No Response" which means that the sender will take full responsibility for the package if it is left on your doorstep and someone does happen to steal it before you get home.  Typically, I try to leave these packages in a place where they're easily visible to someone approaching the door, but not visible from the street to deter theft.  Which means that I'm not going to just leave the package sitting in the middle of your porch where everyone can see it, but rather off to the side somewhere where you'll see it if you walk up to the door, or leave the house, but not if you're passing by the house.

So, anyway, today I get to a box with one more package than there were lockers.  Luckily, one of these packages was for the house right behind the box so it was easy to run it up to the door.  I rang the doorbell.  No answer.  I knocked.  No answer.  The package had a leave if no response note on it, so I set it down to the left of the door where it was blocked by a stone column holding up part of the roof, which extended over the porch.  It was the perfect place to put it.  I was plainly visible from the door, and completely out of sight from the street.

As I jogged back to my vehicle, I heard the door open up behind me, but, since the package was in such a plainly visible spot from the door, I didn't bother heading back to point it out the the person.  I hopped in my mail truck and drove on to the next stop.  As I was finishing up with delivering mail to that community box, a very fat man wearing boxers, a bathrobe, and no shoes stormed up to me and started screaming at me for "Ring and running".

Naturally, I felt an overwhelming sense of wtf-ery.  I stopped thinking such things were funny about thirty years ago, and I had done nothing even remotely like what he was accusing me of.  I calmly explained this to him, but he just yelled over me, giving me a lecture that I'm sure made sense in his head, but wasn't very coherent when spoken aloud.  I didn't know what house he'd come from, and I didn't know why he was so angry, because I hadn't done anything but my job.

I asked him to explain several times before finally giving up, getting back into my mail truck, and driving off while he was still yelling at me.  If you're going to go all crazy person on me, and not even try to explain yourself when asked, I have better things to do with my life than indulge your insanity.

He followed me to my next stop and picked up his tirade exactly where he'd left off.  So I, naturally, called the police on him and drove away again before he got it into his head to become violent.  It was not until a few minutes later that I connected him with the package I'd left on the porch of that one house.  I drive past that house again about twenty minutes later in the route on my way to another section of it, and there he was, pacing angrily on his porch, gesticulating wildly as if arguing with himself.  He saw my mail truck and charged across his porch for me as I was driving past, and promptly tripped over the package I'd left and did a lovely faceplant onto the cement.

There is no possible way someone could have missed this package coming out of that door.  It was big, and brightly colored, completely contrasting the coloring of the house and porch.  This guy must have seen me jogging back to my mail truck and gone insane with rage at me doorbell ditching that he didn't even notice it, instead, running out into the cold, half naked, to scream at me for it, and then returning home to pace on the porch and STILL not see the package.  I mean, what other reason would I have to go to a complete stranger's door?  Seriously?  Why would I waste my time doing anything that is not my job?  Why was his first thought that I was pranking him, rather than, "oh, did the mailman leave something, yes right there, A BIG FREAKING PACKAGE THAT DOES NOT BLEND IN WITH ITS SURROUNDINGS AT ALL!!!"  That someone could be so incredibly ignorant, completely miss a package that was in such plain sight, and then return home to pace back and forth in front of that very same package without even noticing it, and then chase me maybe three blocks down the street in his underwear to scream at me for doing something that even children think is childish and lame makes me laugh.  I mean, really.  WTF.  There's no logic to that at all.  It's just straight up crazy.  What is even the frick?  What is the mental progression that leads from, the mail carrier waited at my door for 3 mins, knocked twice, left a package in plain sight from my door, then jogged back to his truck to I MUST DESTROY HIM!!!