CURBSIDE ETIQUETTE

Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess





Below you will find links to dates when new entries are added. The stories will not necessarily be in chronological order, but rather as I remember them. I am dating them so that you can skip to new ones you haven't read since the last time you visited, and so that you are more easily able to find something you found humorous to share with others.



Entrapment


Please revisit Crybaby Condos with me for this installment of Curbside Etiquette.
Turn That Noise Down
Peeping Tom
If you're just joining us, and don't understand the layout of the Condo community on my route, please make sure you read Turn that Noise Down - details are outlined within that installment.

This is not the entrapment that comes to everyone's mind... the police car lurking in the darkness with no visible lights to catch speeding cars - that's the entrapment that usually comes to the minds of those of us who spend more of our lives on the road than behind a desk. This entrapment has happened to me a few times previously - at the same residence - but it wasn't until a few days ago; I must have had an extra hour of sleep before delivering that night, I guess, because while it was still annoying, I finally found some humor in the whole incident. There are two homes on each driveway, connected in the middle with the common wall between the garages for each unit. On this particular driveway, I toss a paper over the roof onto the porch of the first house, but because of numerous hip surgeries, the rear resident has requested we put the paper up on the picnic table on her porch. This poor woman was waiting for her luggage at an airport - someone put a suitcase behind her and she backed up, and like a scene from a Three Stooges episode, toppled over backward. No, the injury and mulitple surgeries are not funny, but clutz in me can't help but be amused that I'm not the ONLY one who has these things happen to them. Before you accuse me of being twisted, you must know that she laughed when she told me the story. She said it was funny, falling for an old practical joke type action, but in this case, it was purely accidental.

After I toss the first paper to the porch, I have to drive past the garages for both homes, then get out at the second house. On several occasions now, I've realized that the first resident is in her car starting to back out of her garage. I am not exaggerating with this, but she backs straight out blocking the driveway so I cannot get back out. Then, she rummages through the car to find the remote door openner to close the door. I wait patiently while she sits and watches until the last ray of light is extinguished by the closing door. Now, because she has backed straight out, rather than turning her wheels to line the car up like she's going to drive down the driveway, she has to move forward a few feet, then backward a few feet, then forward a few feet, then backard a few feet ... it takes four to six small movements in each direction before she gets her van parallel with the direction of the drivway so she can drive down. YOu can imagine how anxious I get, thinking it would have been more sensible for her to wait for me to exit before she backs the whole way across the driveway. It just doesn't seem to occur to her, though. I've spoken to her a time or two, just about the weather and such - there is nothing wrong with her, as far as signs of being a bit older and confused or unable to move quickly, or anything like that, but she sure as shootin' seems to enjoy entrapping me in the driveway for two or three minutes while she makes certain her door is completely shut and she gets pointed directly down the drivway. Most times now, if I see her starting out of her garage in time, I'll drop my truck in reverse and back down the driveway, go to the next driveway and come back to do the rear house after she's gone. The last time I caught her backing out before I got the whole way into the driveway was last week - I was able to deliver to three driveways, pulling the whole way in and backing out to go to the next before she pulled out of her drivway.

Where's the amusement you ask? I guess the amusement is just in the challenge of getting out of the way before I am blocked in, and the thought of "entrapment" coming to my mind.