In which I defeat the draconian Christmastime security measures of the apartment office and claim my rightful property without sustaining a single injury

While I was at work yesterday, Felicity found a UPS delivery slip on my apartment door indicating that they'd left three packages for me at the apartment office. Full of helpful Christmas spirit and knowing that I don't get home from work until after the apartment office closes, she walked down to the office, delivery slip in hand, to retrieve my packages, as she had done many times before.

The "security measure" (that's what they call it in the monthly newsletter) employed by this apartment complex in the past -- namely, requiring that you possess a delivery slip before they will hand over your packages -- is laughable at best, since any bum could walk in off the street, take the delivery slip off my door, and go get my packages, but I don't care, because it means Felicity can pick up my packages when I can't. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the deluge of holiday packages, they seem to have tightened their security. They told Felicity that, before they could surrender my packages to her, they'd need a written note from me authorizing them to do so. I couldn't call them, either. The note had to be written.

They should have been requiring this kind of thing all along, and they should have asked to see my ID every time I claimed to be Ryan Grove, but they never had until now, and there's nothing I like less than inconsistency. So today, since I work from home on Fridays, I moseyed down to the office to pick up the packages my own self. That's when things got stupid.

Immediately inside the door of the office -- and I mean within arm's reach of the door, sitting right there in the deserted lobby, completely out of sight of anyone -- was a big tall stack of packages waiting for tenants to come claim them. If I'd wanted to, I could have grabbed three or four of them and run without being noticed. Hell, I probably could have gone back for seconds without arousing suspicion. It occurred to me that if any of them were my packages I might as well just take them. I looked, but unfortunately none of them were addressed to me. Oh well.

I walked deeper into the office and found the only person in the entire building sitting at a desk, facing away from the entrance. There were even more packages stacked in this room. I probably could have taken some of the packages off the desk right behind her and she wouldn't have noticed. Instead, I cleared my throat.

"How can I help you?" she asked.

"I'd like to pick up a few packages," I responded, and handed her my delivery slip.

"Okay, right this way."

I followed her out of the room, across the deserted lobby, and into an unoccupied room on the other side of the building that was filled with packages of all shapes and sizes. I spotted mine immediately. They were sitting right in the middle of the floor, stacked on top of each other, each with my apartment number scrawled in foot-high black magic marker on the side. She took the package off the top of the stack and handed it to me.

"Here you go."

"Um, those other two are mine, too," I said, noting that she still hadn't asked to see any proof that I was actually the intended recipient of the packages, and furthermore that she had failed to notice both the number of packages listed on the delivery slip and the fact that I had said I was there to pick up "a few" packages.

"Oh," she said, "which ones?"

"Those two."

I pointed at the two packages with my apartment number on them, although something told me I could have pointed at any two packages in the room and she'd have given them to me.

I guess Felicity just looks sketchy or something. In any case, I'm semi-seriously considering renting a truck, backing it up to the apartment office, and taking as many packages as I can before someone notices, and then giving them all back and saying, "Gotcha!"