DoorDash Driver Refuses To Leave Order On Woman's Doorstep & Demands She Come Outside To Retrieve It From Him
"What is going on with these food delivery places?!"
buryakphoto / Shutterstock Part of the beauty of food delivery services is the option for contactless delivery. With the click of a button, you can have food delivered straight to your doorstep without ever interacting with a human face-to-face.
That's exactly what one woman expected when she placed an order through DoorDash and left instructions for her food to be left at her front door. However, the delivery driver had a different idea, instead demanding she come outside to get the food from him directly — a request that now has him being branded as "creepy."
The DoorDash driver insisted that the woman come outside to get the order from him instead of leaving it at the door as she instructed.
Content creator Rebecca Rogers shared the peculiar and rather unsettling encounter with her 2.9 million followers on TikTok.
“So my friend ordered DoorDash,” she explained in a video that has been viewed over 300,000 times.
When placing an order through DoorDash, customers select how they would like to retrieve their order, with the delivery driver either leaving it at the door or handing it to them directly. Rogers claimed that her friend chose the former.
Shortly before her order was due to arrive, she received a call from the DoorDash driver. The woman answered the phone, assuming the driver was lost or there was a problem with her order. However, the driver simply said that he had arrived with the food.
“She said, ‘Okay yeah! You can just leave it at the door,’” Rogers recalled. Instead of doing as she asked, the driver repeated that he was outside with the food and questioned if she was going to come out and get it from him.
Initially believing that she made a mistake, the woman asked the driver if she had accidentally chosen the option on the DoorDash app to have the food handed to her. However, the driver claimed that he was waiting outside with the food, and since the woman did not appear to be busy, she should have come outside and grabbed it from him.
Photo: Simone Hogan / Shutterstock
When the woman informed the driver that she was actually catching up on some work, he replied that he was “just doing his job” and that “the least she could do” was come to the door and take the order from him.
“I can’t believe you’re wasting my time like this you effing [expletive],” Rogers imitated how the driver berated her friend when she still refused to come outside to get the food from him. “It was bizarre.”
When her friend eventually got the food from her doorstep over ten minutes later, it appeared as if the bag had been violently thrown on the porch by the DoorDash driver, perhaps out of frustration that she refused to go outside to pick it up from him.
Looking back, Rogers said that her friend wondered if she was being unnecessarily difficult and making her DoorDash driver’s job more challenging than it needed to be.
However, Rogers — and others online — reassured her friend that her behavior was not the problem.
“A random strange man at your door having a temper tantrum that you won’t come out and interact with him? That sounds so dangerous,” she noted, believing that her friend did the right thing by refusing to go outside.
Other people echoed Rogers' opinions.
“That's a red flag, like that's stalker behavior,” one TikTok user commented.
“That’s a whole parade of red flags,” another user wrote.
Others online urged the woman to report the driver to DoorDash to prevent other DoorDash customers from feeling as disturbed as she was.
While utilizing DoorDash, customers have the right to request that their drivers leave their orders at their front doors instead of meeting their drivers outside to retrieve them. They could have a reactive dog, have trouble walking outside, or simply, like Rogers' friend, feel uncomfortable retrieving the order directly from a stranger.
Many people, especially women, are taught to err on the side of caution and prioritize their safety by avoiding interactions with strangers. Women are more likely to be targets of gender-based violence, and this awareness can contribute to their feelings of unease when encountering unknown individuals. Not even a few feet from their front doors is a safe place for some women, especially when a strange man is demanding that they come out and meet them.
So if you’re worried about making the job more difficult for DoorDash drivers by requesting them to to drop off your order at your doorstep, don’t be! It is part of their job and could be essential for your safety.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.