I couldn’t be a delivery driver (specifically for my flat)
I live in a black hole. That is a belief I suppose is held by every delivery driver that comes to my flat. It’s not even down to the fact that I do not have a working intercom system, frankly I feel that I am in a black hole that can only be approached one way, where every other path seems to be an optical illusion.
This belief of mine has been founded on the confusion I get any time I live-track a package. If it truly is a Herculean task to get here then clearly…
…I couldn’t be a delivery driver (specifically for my flat).
It’s not even because I still don’t know how to drive. That’s something that can be so easily fixed. No, I’m talking about the void delivery vans enter and come out a completely different location on the map. My flat is surrounded by wormholes and the only attempt for re-entry is available hours later.
Something must be up. There’s not much further I can move into the center of my town, yet that itself creates the true struggle. However accessible I believe I am to delivery drivers big and small, it will take them forever to find me. It’s not even the fact I live in a deceptive flat. My flat isn’t found through one of those blink-and-you-miss-it doors squeezed between high street shops. Those mystical spaces above Chinese restaurants or closed-down husks of a Paperchase. I live in a appartment building with a gate and clearly a Chameleon Circuit from Doctor Who.
Every time I have a new delivery it requires taking a whole day out of my life. Postmen find the flat fine. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will stop the glory of Royal Mail and their postmen that always appologise for waking me despite it being the afternoon and I just have messy hair.
Everyone else, however, has a Herculean task. There I sit, by my window, like I’m waiting for my husband to come back from the war, wondering how the hell it takes hours for them to find a very conspicuous orange building. Staring down at the black mirror held in my hand, watching that tiny picture of a van travel as close and as far as it can from my current location.
I can’t even trust delivery estimates. Every passing minute just means those estimates have to update and delay themself further and further, always in denial that yes, I’m their next delivery. The countdown of stops and packages they need to deliver tick down and every time I am in that false sense of security. Confidence. I don’t know why I’ll always think it’ll be different this time. Like this is the delivery that will change my perception of all deliveries.
It’s never the case. I watch that number tick down and just when I think it’s finally my time…No. It’s not. “The driver has more deliveries to make before yours”. I watch the live updates like a hawk, yet again seeing if the driver is stuck in the town’s one-way system or is clearly just stalling for time before attempting to get here. On more than one occassion the delivery before mine was down the street, the map zoomed so close between van and destination you could probably see me from the balcony. Disappointment as always, however, as it veers completely off the path I assumed it would take, instead heading back out to the outskirts of town, clearly a more convenient route than the one that swoops past mine.
Honestly I can’t fathom why this building is such a deterrent. Whether it’s big deliveries or even just the 5th takeaway this week, sometimes they don’t even find the front gate. There are times they park in the alley behind the building and assume the back gate (of which there is no intercom at all, working or otherwise) is the way in.
Was this building built by wizards from Harry Potter? Is it built upon rocks brought from the Bermuda Triangle? Do all forms of GPS go wild? Can a compass not even work due to a strong magnetic field I didn’t realise this place had? This building should be a bastion for deliveries. 50 or so flats all waiting for deliveries of all sorts. I can’t be the only one here baffled by the delays. I can’t be the only one who finds it strange that a building 5 minutes from a sorting office and in a town with an Amazon Distribution Centre has to wait almost an entire day for things to appear. To watch as their knights in shining delivery vans speed off into the distance despite taking down all targets before theirs.
I couldn’t possibly try to put myself in the delivery drivers’ shoes. With the journeys they must be taking and all the rerouting, it wouldn’t be a surprise to me if I found myself marooned on an island somewhere. If that happened it wouldn’t even be the worst thing to happen.
I’d still have to make 20 more deliveries until I actually tried to find my own flat to deliver to.
Originally published at https://clubgroucho.substack.com.
