Initially the deliveries were quite nice.
There were chicken sandwiches, milkshakes, pastries, lattes and more. Then the items would be delivered by Uber Eats several times a day, at any time.
The thing is, the recipients never ordered any of it.
Since late February, a section of Range View Avenue in Highland Park has been flooded with unwanted deliveries from Uber Eats, the online grocery delivery service. According to local residents, the items mainly came from McDonald’s and Starbucks, although some other fast food chains were also represented.
Six Range View residents interviewed by The Times said they’ve received multiple food deliveries from Uber Eats that they didn’t ask for — and so have many of their neighbors. A handful of people said they received dozens of orders.
“It’s quite remarkable what they can do with a pancake sandwich,” said Range View’s Will Neal of the four McGriddles he and his wife received from McDonald’s on Feb. 25 — the first of about 40 deliveries to their home.
Now, though, after more than two weeks of confusing broadcasts — and a lot of time spent theorizing about the phenomenon — it’s gotten, at least for some, annoying.
“I don’t trust that — I throw it away,” says Dean Sao, a carpenter at Pasadena City College. “I don’t know who is doing this. We joked at first: That must be Elon Musk – I don’t know who else can afford it.”
San Francisco-based Uber, the parent company of Uber Eats, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
When it comes to whodunits, little is at stake. But the mystery of the fast food glut, which seems like a joke whose punchline has yet to be unraveled, is on everyone’s lips. It also highlighted the extent to which anonymity is intertwined with transactions conducted on food delivery platforms, which have exploded since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I don’t think anyone saw it as anything scary — it’s just different levels of anger,” Neal said.
“I Have to Let It Go”
The portion of Range View that was on the receiving end of the deliveries is a diverse section of approximately 25 homes and apartment buildings between Avenues 49 and Avenues 50.
The street, whose avenues are lined with medlar trees, is just a few blocks from York Boulevard, one of Highland Park’s main thoroughfares. There you’ll find establishments offering $6 turmeric lattes and $15 vegan Nashville fried chicken. These are the places hipsters turn their noses up at a Starbucks or McDonald’s offer, even if it was free.
Local residents said drivers delivering to Range View have provided little information about the people who placed the orders, either because they don’t have details or aren’t authorized to share them. The unsolicited deliveries, the recipients said, were on behalf of other people. And the couriers, they added, also seemed largely unfazed by the strange nature of the situation, as meals are paid for — and sometimes with a tip.
“Managers always laugh at the situation,” says Neal, a documentary filmmaker.
Resident Caroline Aguirre, a retired probation officer, said she bumped a courier with a buttonhole when she tried to deliver a bag with James’s name on it, saying the order was not for her. “She said, ‘I have to let go, I have no choice,'” Aguirre recalled. “She gave it to me.”
In one case, Morgan Currier, who said she received about 30 of the deliveries, managed to convince an Uber Eats driver to call the person who placed the order.
“When we called the number on the order, the call was disconnected,” she said.
More often than not, recipients head to their front porch to find, say, two McDonald’s Shamrock Shakes with no Uber Eats driver in sight. (One of the company’s delivery methods allows orders to be left at the door.)
Range View residents provided The Times with several images of the failed deliveries and shared social media posts about the matter on NextDoor, Twitter and Instagram. A tweet mentioned the situation “extremely bizarre.”
In addition to the surreal vibes, The Times was brought to The Times’ attention by veteran Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert B. Weide. The HBO show obviously focuses on Larry David – who plays a version of himself – and the awkward and annoying situations he encounters.
A Times reporter who visited the street Tuesday morning saw no deliveries from Uber Eats.
What to do with the food
Several residents said they ate some of the food sent to them, but not most of it. Neal and others took unwanted food to a dumpster in York where food is regularly donated.
Currier, a vegetarian, had little use for much of the stuff she was given.
“I already have 20 pieces of sweet and sour nuggets,” says Currier, a union executive. “What a shame… to send this to a vegetarian. I had a friend who I texted, ‘come over and get it.’ And then even he said, ‘I can’t eat 20 pieces of chicken nuggets anymore. I’ve reached my limit.'”
Still, she didn’t take out her frustration on the food couriers.
“They’re just trying to do their job and not get into trouble,” Currier said. “I don’t get mad at the managers.”
This is not the first time people have been victims of unwanted orders from grocery delivery services. A story published in January on the grocery website Mashed shed light on a year-old Reddit post about failed Uber Eats deliveries. “Someone is trolling her,” one commenter wrote. There are other notable examples, including that of a man in Antwerp, Belgium, who received unwanted pizzas for nine years – up to 14 in one day – the British Daily Star reported in 2020.
Several Range View residents said their efforts to sort out the situation were frustratingly ineffective. Neal explained that the conversation was far from fruitful when he was able to get an Uber Eats employee on the phone.
“They played it off like it was a simple misunderstanding,” said Neal, who added that the person he spoke to told him, “We’ll make a note of it,” and advised him to check credit card statements for erroneous charges. . (No one was there, he said.)
“I should probably try again,” Neal said, a hint of resignation in his voice.
Some people in Range View have posted signs on or near their front doors to stop deliveries – or at least put things in order. A message encouraged drivers to place orders in a cool box that was left outside. Another pleaded: “Uber Eats will no longer deliver orders to this address. … These shipments are from an unknown source.”
The choice of Calorie Stream vendors — two of the world’s largest fast food chains — also hampered local residents’ efforts to end the rush. The area is dotted with Starbucks and McDonald’s branches, making it hard to tell who was handling the orders.
McDonald’s and Starbucks did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“We were talking about… doing a little podcast”
The unwanted food orders have prompted Range View residents to come up with a slew of theories about who’s doing them and why.
Neal and Kelsey McManus said they initially wondered if the deliveries were part of an elaborate TV show prank. “No one is allowed to use our image,” McManus warned.
Instead, she suggested the warrants could be the ruse of criminals testing stolen credit cards by submitting small claims to them through Uber Eats. “But I wouldn’t know why they would do that,” she admitted.
Noticing the proximity of Occidental College, Aguirre thought the deliveries might be part of an experiment being conducted by a psychology class there.
Currier had an elegant hypothesis: “I think it’s a crash situation or a matrix malfunction.”
While the deliveries were sometimes annoying, Range View residents did not feel threatened, residents said. At least not yet. The past few weeks have also had a positive effect: Uber Eats unwanted deliveries have brought the community together.
“It was definitely nice to connect with the neighbors,” said McManus. “There were simply more neighbors connections. And we talked about doing our own research and doing a little podcast.”
As a light rain fell on the avenue Tuesday morning, a small moment of conviviality clarified McManus’ point — and the extent to which the unwanted fast-food barrage has permeated the social fabric of this part of Highland Park.
McManus was walking home when she saw Neal walking through his front yard to his mailbox. In a quick neighborly conversation, one that could have been about the weather or some other mundane topic just a month earlier, they got straight to the point: the contents of their recent unwanted Uber Eats orders.
Neal explained that he had received a chicken sandwich from McDonald’s on Monday afternoon.
“Was that a McCrispy?” asked McManus knowingly.
“It’s always a McCrispy,” Neal confirmed.
Source: LA Times