Would you open an unexpected package from an unknown sender?
Yes - Why not?
No - Of course not.
Maybe - That might be a package full of Heinz Baked Beans I ordered while drunk.*
0voters
In this thread, I expressed wonder that someone would open an unexpected package from an unknown sender, which was met by surprise by some people. Now I’m curious.
Admittedly, my first job after college was in a mail room in the mid-nineties, when Ted Kaczynski was sending out his little surprises, so we’d gotten A LOT of training on letter bombs. Also, this happened down the hall from me a week into my second job.
So you could say I treat such things with suspicion.
This tended to happen to my friend from Northern Ireland, until his wife got wise and would take his phone when he’s been drinking.
We were trained to look for suspicious odors or leaky packages.
Also the way the mail works is all packages over a certain size and weight must be hand delivered to the post office. People cant just put them in mailboxes.
So unless it smells funny or leaking, your probably ok.
I’d have a whole pile of boxes and letters that the local sheriff’s office would get tired of me calling about if I only opened crap that I personally knew the sender.
The probability of me opening something that is dangerous is so low, I’ll take the chance. So far, I’m 100% safe.
This is surely the issue. If I’m in a potential target category - an abortion clinic, say - then no way am I opening anything suspicious. If not, the chance that a random person is being target is surely infinitesmal compared to a vast number of greater risks in life, and yes I’m certainly opening anything addressed to me.
Yeah. Twice I opened packages that were addressed to my neighbors, but left at my door. Of course, I order a ton of stuff online, so I’m getting packages almost every day. It’s not like getting a package is something that would strike me as unusual. I’d just assume it was for me until I opened it and found something that I’d have never ordered. Then, I check the address label.
I buy enough stuff from third party/ebay type sellers that getting packages from unknown addresses is not uncommon. If I got an unexpected box from an unknown sender properly addressed to me I would be surprised but would still open it to check it’s contents. I usually know what’s coming (if not from who) but I can’t rule out the notion that I ordered something a month ago and forgot it was en route in the meantime.
I would…and if the person was smart enough to put it in an Amazon box I wouldn’t even stop to wonder what it was, even if I didn’t think I had anything coming.
Also, you open junk mail right? At least the stuff you think is junk mail but you’re not totally sure. There’s no reason someone can’t stick some anthrax into mail that looks like it’s from your bank or insurance company. Scam emails and phone calls do exactly that. Why not real mail too?
No. Too many ‘Trailer-Park Trumpists’ out there looking to hurt people without paying the price, especially once the cheap gossips start spreading shit about someone’s politics.
Their gossips move their tongues almost as fast as they drop their jeans.
Yup. I buy a fair amount of stuff from ebay, much of it from overseas, and occasionally also from etsy so it’s not unusual for it to show up weeks after I’ve mostly forgotten about it. I would 100% assume that it was something off of ebay or etsy if it had my name and address on it.
I, quite literally, would safely carry it to an open field* and radiograph the living shit out of it, before I even considered a remote opening of said package. . . as is my wont and training to do. Water bottle charges are an authorized means of opening cardboard packages.
*This is assuming it was delivered by a commercial parcel service.
I’d be wary of packages that I wasn’t expecting, given that my pro-vaccination*, anti-quackery activities online aren’t universally met with acclaim.
A crude-looking package from a party I don’t know (or if the sender is “AMAZONE”) that’s hand-delivered is probably winding up in the trash, or if truly alarming-looking will result in a call to the sheriff’s office.
*after I had a letter to the editor published in my local paper supporting vaccination, a “health choice” group mailed a package to my office at work. Though I had misgivings, it felt like a book and that’s what it turned out to be (an antivax book, natch, that I was then able to review online).
I barely ever order anything from online sellers, so you’d think I’d know exactly when I was or was not expecting a parcel. However, I also have an incredibly shitty memory, so about half of parcel deliveries go like this:
