Former DHL driver. At my outlet, we never smashed your stuff. If it was damaged, it came to us that way from a sorting facility.

One year, around Christmas, in addition to my usual van-and-a-half load of holiday freight that I was expected to deliver in a day in hazardous road conditions, this massive, smashed to hell box comes down the belt. I look at it, it's been taped by the guys at the sorting facility.

It comes my way, I take a look at the label, and sure enough, it's mine. I get it off the belt, but it's just way too big to go in my van. I spoke to our supervisor, and she says to leave it for the big truck. There's one guy in a semi trailer who takes the exceptionally large packages around town.

Lunch time rolls around, and like usual, I don't have time to eat because I've just got too much work to do. I get a radio message from dispatch, asking me to meet the truck and take the package back. So I did.

I don't remember what his issue was, but he was yelling about shit when I got there. I told him to chill out, I'd take the giant pile of rubble with me and deliver it.

I get to the final destination, and I see why he couldn't deliver it. It was for a hole in the wall tattoo shop on an old intersection near downtown. His only option would have been to park a block away and navigate it through the snow. I had to park behind the building, and then hand truck it across the unshoveled terrain. It was extremely difficult because of how large and heavy the thing was.

So I finally make it. I walk into this hole in the wall with their mangled package. Nu-Metal is playing, and I instantly hate the place. Some scrawny guy with a beard and covered in tattoos is just standing there, mouth agape. It's an awkward situation to find yourself in.

I start to talk, and he interrupts, "What the fuck is that?" It was his package. I apologize for the damage, and he's just mean mugging me the whole time. He continues to berate me, and lecturing me on the morals of parcel shipping. Then he tells me he "ain't signing shit" until he examines the package.

The dude is wasting my time at this point, and I still have a lot of other packages going out. The weather isn't getting any better. He looks at it, and decides that the contents aren't damaged. He signs for it, and tells me some shit about how I better hope I still have a job tomorrow. What a fucking prick.

That was about eight years ago. To this day, I still tell people about this business owner, and how he shot the messenger. It's not much, but I've easily steered about thirty people away from his shop over the years.