AITAH for telling my stepson he cannot order from DoorDash?
My adult (20s) stepson lives with us. He has a room upstairs (we have the primary bedroom on the first floor). He pays $325 rent for the room/bathroom each month (pays month to month, no lease), and has a part-time job. We have had several issues with him in the two years he’s lived here, but this is the most recent annoyance.
A couple months ago, we were awakened around 2:30 in the morning by the doorbell. My husband got up (because a doorbell at that hour is usually indicative of an emergency), and realized it was DoorDash delivering food for my stepson. We asked him to please not order food after midnight, as both his dad and I have to be up early for work. Plus, the doorbell activates the dogs, and it takes forever to get them settled back in. He said he put in the DoorDash notes to not ring the doorbell. I told him that isn’t really reliable because every delivery service makes mistakes and they don’t always read the notes.
After that, it happened one other time in January. We reiterated – please do not do this. He sometimes gets home late, but I told him to please just get food on the way home from work or run out to pick up food. I’m fine with him ordering DoorDash any other time (though I think it is kind of dumb because we are about 1-2 miles from all the places he orders from and it is more expensive), but please, not after midnight.
Last night – it happened again. 1:30 AM, doorbell, barking dogs – it was DoorDash delivering McDonalds. My husband was NOT happy (nor was I). Once again, took like 30 minutes to get the dogs back down, at least an hour for us to get settled and back to sleep. My stepson was off work yesterday and there is no reason he couldn’t have made himself something to eat (he knows how to make meals) or ordered food earlier.
I texted him this morning and told him this is a HARD RULE and if he orders DoorDash after midnight again, we are going to have a talk about if he needs to find somewhere else to live, because he isn’t respecting this boundary (this is among many other issues).
He argued that he pays rent so he should be able to order food whenever he wants, and it isn’t his fault that DoorDash isn’t reading his instructions.
