Porch pirates. Specifically, the local crackheads who treat the front of my building like a free, collection point.
If a parcel gets left outside the main entrance for even ten seconds, they materialize out of nowhere like scruffy, opportunistic rats, grab the box, and scurry straight back to whatever den they crawled out of. I’ve lost more parcels over the last few years than I care to count.
The real kicker isn’t just the thieves, though—it’s the endless cycle with Amazon. You leave explicit instructions: Do NOT leave parcels in plain view on the street. But because they swap delivery drivers every single day, you are forever trapped in a groundhog-day battle of re-explaining basic geography to a fresh driver who thinks a communal doorstep counts as “a secure location.”
It turns a simple delivery into a high-stakes, time-sensitive covert operation. If you aren’t standing at the door the microsecond the van pulls up, you’re just funding someone else’s habits.