this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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That seems kind of like the standard procedure around here (Germany) too. When you sell something online, the expectation is always that the buyer comes to the sellers house to pick up the item. I've never seen anyone do that "let's meet at this random parking lot" thing americans tend to do.
The US is a lower trust society than most of Europe
That is sad. Openly showing trust to the people around you (even if you have to take the first step and give someone the benefit of the doubt) creates the safest, most pleasant communities. Plus it's just a massive hassle and mental strain to distrust everyone all the time.
Indeed. The death of the local community will be the undoing of America
Well, what do you expect? It's full of Americans.
Yep I get it, it's a 3rd world thing. In my home country that's what I'd do.
In the town I grew up in, the police station shared a parking lot with a Wawa.
Yeah, they're generally referred to as some variation of a Safe Exchange Zone.
Enjoy it man, that's a privilege to have and it only takes 1 bad incident for it all to come crumbling down when the media blows it out of proportion and everyone goes on a witch hunt for minorities.
Pretty sure it takes a whole lot more than that.
Don't you remember the turning point of the 2002 Hartford kidnapping that turned the US society from a tolerant and inclusive society to a racist and violent hell?
Umm yes, now that you mention it, that was exactly it! Everything before and everything after didn't matter!
You would think but wasn't it in Germany that people went out attacking migrants in response to an incident where migrants were the perpetrators?
All I'm saying is that you assume people will respond logically like yourself but in reality that's rarely the case.
There were a few attacks by angry people. But who says that in Germany "a whole lot more" hasn't happened? People are losing their jobs, capitalism is massively extracting people's wealth, enshittification everywhere. "A whole lot more" than one incident is currently happening.
All I'm doing is staying realistic. You saying "one incident is all it takes" is not literally true. It's an exaggeration, not an entirely untrue one, but still.
Maybe I've lost hope in people, I didn't mean to offend.
You've not offended anyone. Your feelings are valid. Humans are capable of terrible things, but on the whole, we live in an extremely peaceful society. There's luckily so much more humans who do amazing things than terrible, unfortunately a few who do terrible is all it takes for the feeling of safety to crumble.
Even the majority of Germans who let national socialism happen aren't all terrible. The absolute majority of them were just scared and ignorant and had a feeling of helplessness which is why they let it happen, but the actual agreement and horrible things were done by a minority of people. Same in other areas today where terrible things are happening.
People are shity sometimes. I’m one that goes to an address if that’s the expectation. But there are items I almost never sell in person from my home, electronics being one.
My mother had a garage sale (total American thing I'm sure) and was robbed a few weeks later by someone taking an unusual amount of time “shopping“ with her phone out. The gal was a fool, had recordings on her phone of her and the places she was going to rob with address. After a month or so of this, she was caught and her phone searched where they found 20+ videos of other houses where they looked at stuff that would make for easy theft from the garage.
Lessons here are you need to decide who do you let in your home and I know it’s a lot to do with culture. Europe has some social support in place, the USA just says good luck and fuck off.
My wife occasionally agrees to meet people if they live on the other side of the county and it's going to take them an hour to get to our house.
Usually people just come and pick up their items. We live suburbia though so maybe they feel "safer."
Every now and again I'm reminded just how small some countries are, I drive 45min to work every day and I'm only one town over, meanwhile in 15 more minutes you can be on "the other side" of a whole country?
Meanwhile the trip across the US with no stops and traffic will take me 1d 19hr for 2,544 mi (4094.171 km) (according to openstreetmaps).
Edit: LOL I can't read. It's still true I suppose just not in this case haha.
County, not country.
LOL in my defense I had just woken up and I guess I thought you lived in like Luxembourg or some shit.
Yeah fair that aforementioned work is in the next county over from me haha.