Where does the buck stop?

The notice popped up on my phone: “Package delivered.” That was weird because I have a large sign posted on my front door that reads “Ring doorbell” when delivering packages. But it’s actually not so weird, since about 40% of the time they don’t ring the bell. And that’s delivery service at its best.

I opened the door, and there was no package. I double-checked on the app for the picture of the delivery. There was a picture, but it wasn’t my house. I looked briefly up and down at my neighbors’ front porches; the picture didn’t look like any of them. But in scanning my corner of the neighborhood, I spied the delivery van associated with that company parked under a tree across the street. I walked over and knocked on the window.

“Yeah?” asked their customer service representative in the field.

“Hi there,” I began, and then explained to him what I just explained to you.

“Uh,” said that company’s customer service representative. “I’m on my break. Can you come back in an hour?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I thought to myself.

I know breaks are important — and legal. But sometimes …

Once I was in line for a latte, and when it was my turn, I ordered my three specialty coffees, and midway through making them, the barista just disappeared. After about 10 minutes of looking around, we found him.

“It was time for my break,” he said.

In California, all employees are entitled to a 10-minute break for every four hours worked. If you work five hours or more, then you get an additional unpaid 30-minute break that must be provided before the end of the fifth hour. Additionally, no work is to be allowed during any of these breaks. If these criteria aren’t met, then any breaks given are considered void.

None of which helped me with my delivery driver. His “hour break” seemed not only inconvenient and odd but also kind of annoying.

We’ve probably all had that experience where you tell an employee that the bathroom is out of order, or that the turnstile is broken, or the machine doesn’t work, only for them to tell you, “You have to tell someone else,” which begs the question: When did it become my responsibility to tell anybody anything?

It’s called passing the buck, and it’s becoming all too common these days, and it’s even extending into service as well.

• Please bus your own tables.

• Please return carts to the front of the store.

• Please check out your own groceries.

All of which you do not “have” to do. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, but I don’t “have” to. No company is going to make me either. And whatever you do, don’t put up a sign asking for all of those things and then put out a tip jar.

I scoured my neighborhood for those packages to no avail. After about 15 minutes, I gave up on my free delivery. I sat down to wait, fully expecting that field service representative to knock on my door when he finished his uninterrupted hour-long break. An hour came and went, and that driver never bothered. I didn’t make it back to him after his break, so maybe that’s my fault.

In the customer service equation, I have learned that mistakes happen, and it’s important to make people feel like you’re at least aware of the problem and that you’re doing your best to fix it. People don’t like being shined on or ignored — or blamed. No customer wants to be told that they don’t know what medium rare is or that they obviously don’t know their wines. (Someone should tell some chefs and some sommeliers that.) What they want is to feel taken care of. A simple “your food is on the way” makes them believe that. And then check to make sure that happens. Our successes are more linked to how we respond to our failures than to anything else.

Those packages didn’t turn up, so I submitted a report to the carrier and eventually received refunds for all the items. About a week later, a neighbor from two blocks over stopped by and dropped off all of the missing packages.

“Sorry, but I was out of town,” said my neighbor.

“You might want to let the carrier know,” he added.

Sure, let me get right on that.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Expecting grace from someone you just ignored can oftentimes be just too much.

• Sometimes you get what you pay for, for instance, “free shipping.”

• “Take people’s half-full drinks away if they set them down,” commanded a nightclub owner I once worked for.

• “Please donate to my fund; my business is failing,” said that same nightclub owner a few months later.

• “The buck stops here,” once said President Harry S. Truman, who later, ironically, turned out to be one of the most unpopular presidents in American history.