I always get the weird paper carriers
During college, I lived in a complete dump of a sectioned house (half of the upstairs floor - the house had been converted to three apartments). My newspaper carrier during that time ignored one of my stop requests and left upwards of two weeks of papers on my doorstep. In the rain. I came back to find my landing, at the top of very steep stairs, covered in a bonded mass of newsprint.
In addition to the mess, I was upset at the security aspect - anyone who walked around the back of the house and climbed up my stairs (no one, except some guy that regularly cut through the back yard and may have had "sticky fingers") would have seen that I was out. I let the newspaper's customer service have it full bore, and they sent someone out to personally apologize.
My next apartment, a nice move up, came complete with a carrier who could not deliver the paper on time. According to the paper's service agreement, it was supposed to be delivered by 6:30a every weekday, later on the weekends. This mattered to me because I left for work a little after 7, and I was still under my communications professors' spell about reading the whole paper everyday.
I complained, the carrier's mother left a note taped on my door to call her, I did, and she proceeded to accuse me of lying. She told me repeatedly that her son had never delivered a paper late, and that I was lying. She knew her son left on time every morning, did his route, and got every paper to every doorstep on time so I must be lying. I did my best to talk to her about specific dates and times, since I was interested only in getting my freaking paper on time. She was so off the wall that I wrote a letter after the call to the carrier representative, telling them I no longer wanted that carrier delivering my paper.
Not to worry - the next morning she left another nasty note on my door, informing me that I had cost her son his job because she was cancelling his route. New carrier, papers on time, no more dealing with the psycho Victoria Jackson. Yes, I remember her name - same as an SNL actress.
Several years later, had a carrier who delivered from her car to our second-floor condo - by chucking it blind over our railing. After I complained, she did cover the replacement cost of the broken outdoor planter.
Fast forward to last year.
Received a goodbye letter from my newspaper carrier, whose name I will leave out because she is psycho. Honest-to-goodness white-coat needs-psychotropic-drugs involuntary-incarceration nuts.
The setup: she is obviously Asian, and obviously English is not her first language. That explains maybe 3% of the weirdness in her "Good By" letter.
Some snippets:
During the ten years [that she delivered papers], I had be followed and watched by policemen thousands times, community give me so hot time. But, I was never and I am never crime, never do any bed things. It is a group crime build untruth case and made my name on police radio seldom every day.
The last paragraph, in full:
Last things is about No. Two who are Chinese, she has some name with me. She protend me has been 19 years. Last spring, I meet her on my rout, in Peter Creek Retail Center at 14431 Redmond Way. She saw me and run away . I think she massage on my rout, and people think she is me. She live in Seattle. But drove a car that completely like my car, and came to my rout at early morning 5 o'clock. She is protend me. If you know something about her, please let me know.
Despite having to deal with this doppelganger, she always delivered the paper on time. Victoria Jackson: bite me, you crazy witch.
Our latest carrier: on time, and left us a nice generic Christmas note.
Thank goodness.