A California man says a grocery delivery mistakenly landed across the street, but getting the order back wasn’t as simple as knocking on his neighbor’s door. According to the man, his neighbors brought the groceries inside, didn’t answer when he came looking for them, and later left what appeared to be the delivery packaging sticking out of their recycling bin.
AstronautSlothPhD said the delivery photo showed the home across the street, so he walked over shortly afterward and tried to retrieve the order. “I rang the doorbell and then knocked, but they wouldn’t answer even though someone clearly had to be home to grab the groceries,” he recalled.
The Reddit post presents AstronautSlothPhD’s account of what happened. The neighbors’ version of events is not included, and the photos alone do not establish exactly how the groceries ended up inside their home or in the recycling.
California Man Spots His Delivery Boxes in Neighbor’s Recycling
“What is shady, to me, is that they then pretended not to be home… so you kinda know they know…” AstronautSlothPhD wrote. His suspicions grew when he says he later spotted packaging from the delivery sticking out of the neighbors’ recycling bin. “They left the evidence sticking out of their recycle bin…” he added. In photos shared with the Reddit post, labels containing what he says are his name and address appear to remain attached to the discarded packaging.
Not everyone was ready to assume the neighbors intentionally kept someone else’s groceries. One commenter wondered whether they could have contacted the delivery service after receiving an unexpected order and been told to keep it. “They could have grabbed it, called the company, was told to keep it, and then left the house,” the commenter suggested, before acknowledging another possibility: “Or they could suck.”
The grocery service ultimately refunded the order. AstronautSlothPhD said that was particularly important because he is currently unemployed, although he remained frustrated by what he believed his neighbors had done.
“I wouldn’t want the food back after being misdelivered,” one commenter wrote. AstronautSlothPhD responded that he “was honestly hoping they still had the box and just hadn’t opened it yet,” adding that only about 10 minutes had passed since the delivery.
AstronautSlothPhD also claimed this wasn’t the first delivery problem involving the same neighbors, saying they had previously kept another package that was mistakenly delivered to their home. That allegation is based on his account and has not been independently verified.
Several commenters shared similar stories about deliveries that ended up at the wrong homes and were never returned.
The grocery service ultimately refunded the missing order, but that didn’t erase the awkwardness of living directly across the street from the people AstronautSlothPhD believes kept it. Finding what appeared to be his delivery packaging in their recycling only made the situation stranger. As one commenter put it, “The audacity to pull something like that when you live directly across the street is crazy.”
