Amazon key participants can get their packages delivered behind locked doors instead of on porches or front steps. The idea is to have less package theft and reduce failed delivery attempts. The reality is that while this is our future, it isn’t one we are currently prepared to embrace.

I’m not worried about the delivery driver. I’m not worried about my packages. There is already a camera recording everything that happens at my front door that I can watch live or replay later. I have a tracking and delivery app that alerts me before the drivers have pulled away from our curb. Delivery vehicles have time stamped cameras in their cabs. If drivers wanted to steal, it would be much easier for them to not deliver than to grab things inside homes.

The problem is the unintended consequences of in-home deliveries. Seniors are going to have heart attacks from the fright of seeing a stranger leaning in their doorway. Delivery drivers are going to get shot by people with itchy trigger fingers.

We once went a few days with a deadbolt, but an empty hole where the front doorknob belonged because the husband was “working on it.” One day, the delivery driver put his face to the hole and said, “Knock-knock.” I was home. Fast forward that story to us getting our deliveries in the middle of the front lawn for the rest of that month.

Unintended consequences.

Enclosed apartments could probably adapt to this service effortlessly. Wealthy homes need to be built with locked vestibules that contain refrigerators for their packages and grocery deliveries. The rest of us just need old fashioned locking postboxes.