It’s a very modern delivery dilemma. You’ve lugged the box from the van to the door, but no one’s home. Do you leave it with a neighbour, hide it somewhere or just dump it and head off?
One delivery service has been forced into an embarrassing apology to a Swedish mother after one of its couriers left a heavy parcel on top of her baby as it slept in a pram.
The unnamed woman had left her infant in a pushchair outside the front door, as is common practice in Scandinavia, and was taken aback to find a large cardboard box from Hello Fresh, a grocery delivery service, on top of the child.
“Congratulations,” she wrote on Instagram. “You crushed a sleeping baby in its pram with a 10kg parcel, and have no shame. Thank God the baby is OK! Never again!”
Camilla Gervide, a social media blogger who publicised the case on her website Bloggbevakning (Blog Report), said that the woman had called the logistics firm responsible, Gordon Delivery, and was initially offered 250 Swedish kronor (£20) in compensation.
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The company said that its courier was shocked when he was informed of the mistake. “When no one opened up, the driver wanted to leave the parcel on the doorstep, but he thought the surface was too damp,” Mikael Sahlsten, a spokesman for the business, told the Aftonbladet newspaper.
“So he thought the pram would be more practical. He didn’t see the baby. The mother called us immediately and we made contact with the driver right away.
“He was very sorry about the whole thing. He drove back to the customer and apologised with flowers and pralines. He also wanted to know how the child was doing.”
In a subsequent Instagram post the mother wrote that the courier had been “almost in tears” when he knocked on her door to apologise. She has since been given two free deliveries to make up for the incident.
The custom of leaving babies alone outside is fairly widespread in Sweden and other Nordic countries, even in relatively cold weather. Parents have traditionally been encouraged to expose their infants to fresh air in the belief that they sleep longer and develop stronger immune systems. However, there is little conclusive evidence that this makes the children healthier.