Oooh my ding ding dong!

Place I used to live would occasionally get FedEx and never get UPS. I had to rent a mailbox to get them to deliver consistently. The company I rented the mailbox from was right next door to me, btw.

After the first few times, I joined their "My Choice" and "Delivery Manager" or whatever they call it... but that did absolutely nothing

Quite incorrect! It forced you to personally confirm and link together your full name, address, phone number, residential IP address, and your mobile device’s various advertising ID numbers. This information is much more valuable to them than any postage you will ever pay.

“But GDPR, they can’t just…” lol, the enforcement agencies don’t touch these American conglomerates and they know it.

Here in Romania most of the local delivery companies (the big internationals usually hand off to a local affiliate once it's imported, so that covers your FedExes and the like) have drivers who you'll get to know by name and have their number in your phonebook - typically I'll get a quick "hi, I'll be there in 5 minutes if you're in?" courtesy call before delivery, and if you're not home but in a coffee shop round the corner or the like they'll happily divert to you or make another arrangement.

It's one of those weird areas (and I'm in no way claiming this across the board) where quality of life can actually be better in a poorer economy than a rich one - when labour is cheap enough that you can employ actual people to do actual jobs, you just get better stuff (like delivery drivers that know your name, or parks that actually have park keepers and litter pickers, and all those other little things that as a country gets richer become just too expensive.) I welcome that the country is getting wealthier obviously, but you can already feel some of that slipping away and there's a tinge of sadness.

Back on topic though - ugh, DHL though are the one I dread. Not that their local delivery guys aren't fine, they are, but my God the amount of paperwork they demand you complete before they'll actually release an international shipment for delivery is nuts. Very Germanic (bless them.)

South Florida myself, which there isn't a great divide between the two culturally.

Yeah this was my experience. People used the slur n***** knockin' through all of my childhood 70s and early 80's but as a young adult in the 90s it was doorbell ditching.

I knew it as Ding Dong Ditch and then kids in my neighborhood told me it was called [Hard R] Knocking. This was mid-90s. I also spent ages 10-15 living in a trailer park in Florida, which probably explains this.