Know what scares me the most as a UPS driver? People who fear for their lives.

Recently, in the space of about a week, the news media have reported on no fewer than four separate incidents where an honest mistake or innocent misunderstanding led to gunfire.

In Kansas City, a sixteen-year-old boy rang the doorbell of a house where he was sent to pick up his younger siblings, except he was on the wrong street. Despite being shot in the head by the 84-year-old homeowner, he miraculously survived.

Just outside Austin, Texas, two teenage girls attempted to enter the wrong vehicle in a supermarket parking lot. Both were shot by a 25-year-old man in the passenger seat, with one suffering serious injuries; thankfully, she’s expected to recover.

A twenty-year-old woman was shot to death after her boyfriend drove their car full of partygoers up the wrong driveway in rural upstate New York. The 65-year-old homeowner is being charged with second-degree murder.

And in south Florida, a nineteen-year-old driver and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend had their vehicle shot at when they attempted to deliver groceries to the wrong house. The vehicle damage notwithstanding, no injuries were reported and no charges were filed against the 43-year-old homeowner.

Every time I read or hear about stories like these I think to myself, that could have been me.

My job as a UPS driver is to deliver every package to the correct address, every time. But I’m only human after all. I’ve delivered to the wrong house – yes, even the wrong street. I’ve driven up the wrong driveway. I’ve rung the wrong doorbell. More than once. Quite regularly in fact.

I’m much more likely to make these mistakes in the late afternoon or evening in residential neighborhoods. I’m tired from having already worked a full shift, so I’m not as mentally sharp. The GPS will think I’m one street/house over from the one I’m actually on/at. I get momentarily disoriented; the houses start looking more and more alike in the waning daylight. As darkness descends it becomes increasingly difficult to navigate unfamiliar areas.

At least a few times each week I have to go back and retrieve a package I just misdelivered. People are usually very gracious about it. Oftentimes they’ll be the ones to catch the mistake before I’ve even had a chance to drive off.

Likewise when I go down the wrong driveway. I’m a little chagrined by my oversight, but most people accept my heartfelt apology with good humor.

Still, from time to time people have been less sanguine about the error. I remember once in a remote, rural area – not far from where I got stuck for an entire afternoon – I drove down the long driveway of an unmarked address, hoping I’d guessed correctly. I had not. The surly resident wasn’t at all pleased by my presence. He didn’t become violent but I didn’t waste any time leaving, lest he become so if I lingered.

In my two-plus years of driving for UPS I’ve learned that the number of residences where visitors – especially uninvited and/or unannounced visitors – are actively discouraged is not inconsequential. I see all manner of signs posted to that effect. Perhaps you’ve seen them too. Something like:

Signs like these are good-natured and clearly state the residents’ desire to distinguish between welcome and unwelcome visitors.

Then there are signs that take it up a notch. Many properties advertise the presence of firearms and the assurance of their use.

Some of these signs are clearly tongue-in-cheek, like this one:

Other signs are clever and have a homespun charm, like this one:

Still others are probably intended as tongue-in-cheek, but come across as more menacing, like these:

The message I take from signs like these is, if I get shot, I can’t say that I hadn’t been warned.

Ironically, I’m much more likely to see these signs in rural, ‘extended’ areas than in neighborhoods in town. I say ironically because these outlying areas are much less likely to have a problem with crime in general, trespassing in particular, and unknown or unwanted visitors of any kind. I have to ask myself, what prompts these signs, exactly? What or who is the threat? Why all the fear, all the way out here?

Now, I don’t actually waste much time or energy worrying about the prospect of getting shot at by a customer. They ordered something so they should be expecting me. Plus I’m usually arriving in a big brown truck, always in my brown uniform. But after dark, what can customers actually see of me or my vehicle? What goes through their mind when they hear – but don’t see – me driving up their driveway or walking to their door? I wouldn’t put it past one of them to react the same way those homeowners did.

Once I was put on a route that I wasn’t at all familiar with. Everything was fine until that point after sunset when there’s zero daylight left. There wasn’t a lot of moonlight that night, either, and this suburban neighborhood had no street lights. On top of this, it was customary for residents not to keep their porch lights on after they went to bed.

I had my LED light vest on but it was already past 9 pm in utter darkness. I did not feel at all safe to keep on delivering. All it would take was one hyper-vigilant resident to release their dog on me – or worse, draw their gun on me. I’d already heard stories of fellow drivers seeing the red dot on themselves from a laser sight being drawn on them. I’d already seen warnings in my ‘DIAD’ about certain addresses where guns had been brandished.

Other drivers may have been fine with such delivery conditions. I was not. I called the office and told the night supervisor as much. He gave me permission to call it a night. I brought all the undelivered packages back to the building with me.

UPS management loves to tell drivers that it’s not worth risking your life for a package. That ‘if you don’t know, don’t go.’ And that particular night, that’s exactly what I did.

We are afraid. We’re afraid in our homes. We’re afraid at our jobs. We’re afraid at our parks and shopping centers and movie theaters and churches. Our kids are afraid at their schools. Bad things can and do happen – anywhere, anytime. We feel powerless to stop them. Our guns make some of us feel less powerless. Other people’s guns make many of us feel more threatened.

The odds of my ever experiencing or even witnessing gunfire in my role as UPS driver are infinitesimally small. It’s about as unlikely a scenario as an armed citizen ever being involved in a shooting. It’s because these events are so highly exceptional that they garner so much media attention.

Still, every time I read or hear about stories like these I think to myself, I would not be at all surprised if one day it happens to me.