A DoorDash Driver Left Someone Else’s Bag at Her Door and Instead of Reporting It Through the App Came Back After Dark Screaming Her Name and Pulling at Her Doors Until She Called the Police
She placed a DoorDash order around 8 p.m. from a restaurant with bar pickup only, a setup that sometimes means a short wait. This time it wasn’t short. The app showed the dasher waiting at the restaurant for 30 minutes, but their location marker was sitting at a Target down the street instead.
She contacted support and asked if the order could be reassigned. Support tried reaching the dasher but couldn’t get the order released, leaving her with only the option to cancel with no refund. The restaurant sits less than 10 minutes from her house. It took another 20 minutes for the dasher to actually arrive.
A Delivery That Included Someone Else’s Purchase
When the dasher finally showed up, they called saying they couldn’t find her house and asked her to come outside or flash her lights. She checked her camera and told them directly they were parked right in front of her house. She asked them to leave the order at the door per the delivery instructions.
Outside, she found her food, along with a Target bag containing a flat iron that clearly wasn’t hers. The dasher was already gone. She reported the mixed-up order to DoorDash right away, and support said they’d handle it. The dasher’s photo only showed the inside of the car, so there was no way to see both bags sitting together beforehand.
Dogs Going Wild, Then Screaming at the Door
She ate, then got in the shower before bed. While she was in there, her dogs started going crazy, including one that almost never barks, which is what actually alarmed her. She got out, made it halfway down the hall, and heard screaming, banging, and someone pulling at her doors.
It took a moment to realize the dasher had come back. By then, her dogs were too worked up for her to safely open the door, since they would have gone straight at whoever was outside. The person kept screaming and pulling at the door while someone else in a car outside honked and yelled, a mix of her name, curses, and things she couldn’t fully make out.
Calling the Police Over a Flat Iron
She called the police. The screaming and door-pulling continued until officers arrived and told the woman to stop. The dasher explained she just wanted the flat iron back to complete her own delivery and thought she was being ignored.
She told the officers she’d already reported the mix-up to DoorDash and that the dasher could have done the same on her end instead of coming back to the house. She also pointed out how unsettling it was that the dasher, who claimed not to be able to find the house the first time, somehow found it again on a return trip, and that having two strangers screaming and banging on her door at night was genuinely frightening regardless of the reason behind it.
Police handed over the bag, told the pair to leave, and advised them not to come back.
Why Calling the Police Wasn’t an Overreaction
Screaming, banging, and pulling at someone’s front door at night is alarming behavior no matter what the underlying dispute actually is. The dasher had a straightforward, calm option available the entire time: report the mix-up to DoorDash support, the same channel she’d already used successfully. Instead, she and someone else showed up at a stranger’s home after dark and escalated to yelling and physically pulling at the door.
That response is wildly disproportionate to a mixed-up delivery bag, and it’s reasonable to treat unknown people aggressively trying to force entry as a real safety concern, regardless of what they’re actually there for.
A Reasonable Read of a Genuinely Unsettling Night
Her instinct that this could have escalated further if she’d opened the door isn’t paranoid, it’s a fair read of the situation as it was actually unfolding in real time, with two people already agitated and yelling before any conversation had even happened. Waiting for police rather than opening the door to an unknown, already escalated situation was the safer call.
The comparison to what she would have done in the dasher’s position, simply canceling the order or reporting the issue and moving on, highlights just how unnecessary the confrontation actually was. Nothing about a missing flat iron justified showing up at someone’s home a second time and creating a scene loud enough to require police intervention.
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