I’m sure we’ve all experienced that annoying moment when we’ve made sure that we’re in our houses for a delivery and it’s just never shown up. It’s a mixture of frustration and anger and helplessness as there’s literally nothing you can do about it except wait for it to come, be that later in the day or another day entirely. It’s fucking annoying.

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44 year old Dean Smith from Tavistock decided to take the power back and do something about it though. Granted, he was kind of unlucky in that the Amazon delivery was a few minutes early and he saw it pulling out of his drive after he was returning home at 10 a.m. to be ready for it, but instead of moping around about it he decided to take the matter into his own hands and follow the driver:

I’m a man of common sense and I was not prepared to let this mattress be driven away.

Even if they took it out of the van and left it at the side of the moor, I would have been happy. This is bureaucracy gone mad.

They wanted to drive the mattress back to Taunton and then back to my house tomorrow. I worked in transport deliveries for seven years and this is just insane.

I followed the van out of Tavistock and was able to confront the driver when he pulled over to make a phone call.

I asked them about the mattress which they confirmed they had, but they said they couldn’t deliver it to me because it had been logged as a missed delivery so would have to be returned to Taunton.

It was at this point I lunged for their keys. I then refused to give the keys back to the driver until they gave me the mattress, which resulted in them calling the police.

I had a bit of an argy-bargy with the police officer.

She wanted me to give up the keys. She said she was going to arrest me if I didn’t but I was prepared to go down fighting.

I took them in lieu of my mattress. I was offering to give them back provided they gave me what’s mine.

In the end, the police officer advised the drivers to give me the mattress. They were very nice about it all and even carried it onto my trailer for me!

Well well well, I suppose it just goes to show if you put your foot down about something and are prepared to see it through, then you just might get what you want out of it every now and again. Who would have thought it?

Bet the paperwork was hell for the delivery drivers to be fair though, so can’t really blame them for not wanting to hand it over but props to Smith for standing his ground, even if he did sort of create a hostage situation. Bear that in mind next time an Amazon delivery driver comes over to your house.

For more hostage situations, check out Netflix’s new television show recreating the real life circumstances surrounding specific incidents. Intense.