Willow and Hearth

The phone notification said her food had arrived. Then came a knock, her dog started “barking his head off,” and when TikTok user @aksoekoro opened her apartment door, she says, “it was two men making my delivery order.” The order was one bowl of pho.

Two things were supposed to keep that from happening, according to the video she posted September 28 under the text “PSA if you order from any type of food delivery service!!!” The first is her building. Residents are “supposed to get a phone call or text” when a visitor or delivery arrives, asking whether the person can be let up, she says, and she “never got any of that.” The second is the note on her Uber Eats order: “please leave at my door. Do not knock.”

She explains that the note exists because of the dog, who “will go ballistic” at a knock. In hindsight, she says, she is glad he did.

Her reaction at the door was fast: “Grab the food, shut the door, lock it.” Her question afterward: “why does it take two men to make a singular order?” The order “wasn’t a big order, didn’t require any communication,” and needed no PIN, she says, so the bag could have been set down and the driver could have “been on their merry way.” She thinks the men could see from the app that the customer had “a girl’s name” and that it was a single meal, and “probably assumed that I was alone.”

She says plainly that nothing happened and allows that she may be reading too much into it: “I could be overreacting here.”

About an hour later she went down to the front desk and told the employee on duty it was “kinda concerning that you let two men up to my apartment” without a call. She says she raised it politely and that it “didn’t really seem like she cared.”

Next she contacted Uber Eats. She says she reported that two people came to the door and that neither one looked like the man in the delivery driver’s profile picture. The reply, as she describes it, was that the driver would be made aware of the community guidelines. She was not satisfied with that answer.

The following day she took it to the building’s property manager, who she says called it “super concerning.” She has since changed her name in the Uber Eats app and says she is “probably never gonna be ordering from any of these apps again.” The video does not include a response from Uber Eats or the building.

She addresses the video to women who order from Uber Eats, DoorDash or any other delivery service, and gives her reason near the end: “what if it was someone who didn’t have a dog with a big, scary bark?”

Setting Up Deliveries in a Building With a Front Desk

Start with the building, because that is where her account says the first check was skipped. Email the property manager and ask three things in writing: what the visitor procedure is for deliveries, whether the desk log shows who was sent up to your unit at that time, and whether deliveries for your unit can be held at the desk. An email gives you a dated record, which a conversation at the counter does not.

Change the drop point in the app. If your building has a staffed desk or a lobby, make that the delivery location and go down for the bag yourself. Her instructions sent the driver to her door, which put the handoff on her floor.

Change what the driver sees. She replaced her name after this order. Use an initial or a household name on the account before the next one.

If someone knocks despite a leave at door note, keep the door shut. Look through the peephole, say through the door that the food can be left on the floor, and wait until the hallway is empty and the app shows the order as delivered before you open up. She opened the door and describes grabbing the bag and locking up as fast as she could.

Report it to the app the same night with the specifics she used: how many people came, and whether either matched the profile photo. Before you report, screenshot the driver’s profile and the order screen with its time stamps, and ask for a reference number for the complaint.

Keep one note with the time of the delivery alert, the time of the knock, who was on the desk, and the date you told the manager. If the first answer is thin, as she felt hers was, that note is what you send up the chain.