Sorry not sorry that we missed you! See below for possible reasons we were unable to complete your delivery:

 

You weren’t home.

 

You were home.

 

You either were home or weren’t home, but we just didn’t feel like it.

 

We attempted delivery on a weekday between the hours of nine a.m. and five p.m. when you, along with most of the adult population, were at work. We plan to do the same thing tomorrow. Please initial here to acknowledge your powerlessness.

 

We mistakenly buzzed your cool neighbor instead of you, kicking off an unexpected, all-day hangout montage that included romping through Central Park and playfully tossing your package back and forth.

 

We are unable to deliver to P.O. boxes, ballot boxes, boxer dogs, or the California senator Barbara Boxer.

 

We buzzed your cool neighbor instead of you again, just to tell him what a great time we had the other day.

 

We wanted to teach you a lesson about exploiting resources to maintain your lazy lifestyle. You could have easily picked this up from a store in your neighborhood, but you chose not to. Did you think about the wastefulness of the packaging, the fossil fuels needed to power our vehicle, the business you took away from a local shop and gave instead to an international conglomerate? No, you didn’t. You only thought how much less embarrassing it is to buy a lifetime supply of adult coloring books online than in person.

 

We won the “Cats” digital ticket lottery and had to go to Times Square for the matinée.

 

We don’t care for your part of town.

 

Your cool neighbor told us that you aren’t cool.

 

We heard The Signal, a vibration audible only to our company’s delivery people, indicating that we should abandon our route. The Signal happens once a week at the behest of our C.E.O., a misanthropic recluse who lives in a subway tunnel and has never been seen by human eyes.

 

You don’t have a doorman.

 

Your doorman was napping so sweetly and we didn’t have the heart to wake him.

 

Shorts itchy. Stomach hungry. Truck crashy.

 

We didn’t think you could handle the debilitating realization that your emotional state, upon the arrival of your item, will never be able to match the fleeting high you experienced when placing the order. Your life is an endless cycle of commercial consumption and disappointment, and our presence at your door will only remind you of that depressing fact. You do not need another box of sadness. We have spared you. No need to thank us.

 

You failed to leave outside your door the sacrificial offering of two live rats that our C.E.O. demands.

 

There was a film shoot, union protest, or hissing bodega cat blocking the entrance to your building.

 

Your building does not have an elevator.

 

Your building has an elevator, but it exceeds our Stink Threshold.

 

We are actually a Hollywood actress preparing for an upcoming film role as an adorably down­-on­-her­-luck single mom who takes a shipping job to support her family, only to become an unlikely crusader for gender equity in the industry. (“Down to Truck” is based on a true story.)

 

Our C.E.O. has been overthrown by a revolutionary contingent of rats, and all operations are suspended until further notice. We suggest you stock up on food and water and lock your windows and doors as a precautionary measure.

 

Your address doesn’t exist, according to our G.P.S.

 

Your package doesn’t exist, according to the theories of the eighteenth-century radical empiricist philosopher George Berkeley.

 

Nothing exists. Not our regulation socks; not the vape pen hidden in our glove compartment; not the rats pouring into our company headquarters.

 

Our new rat overlords are still getting the hang of the handheld label scanners.

 

You wrote, read, or shared a humor piece satirizing your negative delivery experience, and we take umbrage at the unflattering characterization.