Not much wiggle room there…
I work for a logistics company that handles the freight from Amazon to the post office. We have to cram so many packages so quickly into the trucks (for so little $, btw), that I often have to literally get a running start with a pallet jack pushing a 5-foot-tall stack of empty pallets in order to smash the boxes in enough to get the damn door closed. That driver is overworked, underpaid and did what he had to do to deliver the damn package. I doubt the TV was even damaged.
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Okay, I’ll concede “unacceptable” and substitute for “undesirable.” It is undesirable for most anyone to see their parcels handled in this manner, especially being left unsheltered outside. Because the very fortunate residents of this home have a fence to keep the ‘riff-raff’ out, it’s less likely someone would steal it, but it’s still exposed to the elements and even though there’s usually a pretty hefty safety margin in electronics packaging these days, there’s still a chance the item could’ve been damaged.
All the same, my point was and still is–let’s not get into some kind of hateful circle-jerk about how terrible this guy is without considering the material reality of the situation. You’ve got an overworked and underpaid residential logistics driver, delivering cheap electronics to a visibly wealthy household with an apparently locked and gated driveway. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for the people with the fence that did exactly what they wanted the fence to do.
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Dont forget that every inch of the property is likely under surveillance, and bored cops in this town will be at the gates in a minute if anything remotely suspicious happens.
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It’s even an ASTM standard:
https://www.astm.org/Standards/D5276.htm
You’re really supposed to drop it on multiple sides and corners. But it’s still just measure and drop.
Fun fact: you don’t want the box and spacers to be strong. Learned this from a guy with 40 years experience designing protective packaging (including for lightbulbs). Think in terms of crumple zones on cars, though ideally springing back close to original shape ready for another impact. A beat-to-hell box doesn’t necessarily mean the product inside is damaged. Definitely not a good sign, but not automatically a busted product.
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It looks like he drops it from the height that is required to avoid touching the fence and potentially banging up his arms.
Since this package clearly doesn’t require a signature, the driver could have also just left the package outside the gate and walked away, and nobody would have blamed him for that. I’d argue that this is the driver doing the resident a favor.
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Well yeah, they have cameras facing the goddamned street, after all.
Hm, 2012 video. It’s an old TV, so no worries.
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…or rather…fall-damage 
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As I read this, the driver taking out his frustration on someone who is not his employer is understandable and even somewhat acceptable. I don’t buy it. If his job conditions stink, and I have no doubt they do, then he can take that up with his management. These people did nothing to him.
Also, it looks like he could have slid the box between the rails of the fence rather than throw it. I too have hated jobs, but it was my boss who got the ire, not the customers.
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Guy obviously didn’t give a shit, and that’s not great, but the commenters above are right that (a) the clock is probably driving that, and (b) what do you expect if you order electronics and then leave your five-foot spiked gate shut.
My thing is this - give the guy some kind of hook. Hell, the claw end of a hammer might do it. Then he could just lower the item over low- to medium-height fences and he wouldn’t have to look for a bush to throw it in. No extra time taken, and no wasteful delivery of a broken TV.
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He would get in much more trouble at work if he injured his arm on the spiked fence than damaging a package.
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FedEx drivers have a scanner that times them at a location using GPS. They have 15 seconds to arrive at the location and turn off the truck, unload, deliver, and be back in the truck, essentially being clocked in to the loaction using GPS, and then clocking out manually. Every second over is noted, and taken out of their break. Their breaks are supposed to be spent re-organizing the truck. It’s similar to how Amazon times their warehouse pickers, and penalizes them for not meeting obscene standards.
Acceptable, and unnacceptable are moot when you’re under the gun like that.
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The entire practice is unacceptable.
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At my parents house, we have a fence 2 meters high, because it’s in countryside and there are some burgrlars first and some critters like wild boars and foxes roaming.
When they have to get a big or expensive package delivery they ask that is delivered at the post office, and wait to receive only a postcard to get the package.
On the other hand if I find a package in my property and the courier doesn’t have a receipt signed, I’ve never received it, and if it’s damage it’s chargeback time.
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Now, this is dysfunctional, because if you cut the delivery times and microcontrol it and the result is that packages are randomly thrown instead to be delivered, the entire courier mechanism ha to be rethought.
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Maybe he aimed for something that would break the fall, like a shrub or fish pond.
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Just leave it in front of the gate and be done with it.
He could have done that and spent 2 seconds pressing the call button and still just walked away, but he knew it was going over the fence before he got there. That gate was for cars, there was probably another (unlocked?) gate a few steps away.
Missing datum: The number of times the customer previously bitched when packages were left in front of the gate.
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Yeah, I was watching that, thinking, “What else is he supposed to do? Ring some buzzer, hope someone is home and eventually answers the door, the time for which he’s not been allowed by his bosses?” I can’t really blame him. I mean, he could have left it on the sidewalk to be stolen. (Ironic outcome!)
I’m annoyed at delivery drivers when they just toss a package over my front fence, because they do it right at the gate which is clearly openable. (I just found a delicate, “this way up” package on its side having been tossed over.) But delivery drivers clearly aren’t scheduled with enough time to open gates even when that’s possible - if I’m waiting for the delivery, with a window open so I can hear the vehicle, they’ll have delivered it and left before I can get to the door. So it’s clearly a matter of speed rather (or at least more) than laziness.
Yeah, given the amount of transportation it’s undergone, that’s probably a safe assumption.
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