There are simple delivery instructions.
Leave at door.
There are slightly more ambitious ones.
Seventh floor. Turn right. End of the hall.
And then there are instructions that make you wonder whether food delivery has quietly become an entrance exam for a federal government job.
My app said:
Apartment: 715
Buzzer code: Lambert
Leave at door
Excellent.
I arrived, grabbed the order, and walked up to the intercom.
Numbers.
Arrows.
A star.
A pound sign.
A green phone button.
I looked at my phone.
Buzzer code: Lambert.
I looked at the keypad.
Then back at the phone.
Lambert.
Right.
Maybe this was one of those new smart intercoms that responds to confidence.
Perhaps I was supposed to lean in and say:
“Lambert.”
Preferably with proper French pronunciation.
I tried the obvious thing instead.
715.
A woman immediately started speaking to me in French.
Fast.
Very fast.
I’ve lived in Montreal long enough to understand French in restaurants, stores, parking signs, and occasionally even when someone actually wants me to understand it.
Intercom French is different.
Intercom French sounds like the final listening-comprehension section of an exam you forgot you were taking.
She said something.
I caught maybe “sept cent quinze.”
Then more French.
Then silence.
The door remained locked.
I tried again.
Same woman.
Same speech.
Same door.
At this point, the intercom displayed:
Pour voir le répertoire faites 1.
Press 1 to see the directory.
Perfect.
My dinner delivery had now become database administration.
I pressed 1.
Then I started scrolling.
701.
702.
703.
Click.
Click.
Click.
At this rate, I was going to know everyone in the building before I met the customer.
Eventually:
715.
There it was.
I selected it.
The intercom called.
And once again…
the French recording.
Same woman.
Same message.
Same absolutely committed door.
I was standing there holding someone’s dinner, trying to operate what now felt less like an intercom and more like a piece of infrastructure designed by a committee.
Then I happened to glance to my left.
There, beside the entrance, was a pile of Amazon packages.
Not one.
Several.
Boxes.
Envelopes.
A whole little delivery ecosystem.
I looked at them.
Then at the intercom.
Then back at the packages.
And suddenly I understood.
These were not abandoned parcels.
They were evidence.
Other people had been here.
Amazon drivers.
Maybe FedEx.
Maybe DoorDash.
People who had arrived with optimism, a package, and instructions.
People who had stood in exactly the same spot, tried exactly the same keypad, listened to exactly the same mysterious French woman…
…and eventually made a business decision.
I started placing my order beside the others.
At that point I messaged the customer:
“I can’t figure out how to use the intercom, so I’m going to leave the order downstairs at the entrance.”
He replied almost immediately:
Code is 715.
Thank you.
715.
The number I had already entered.
Several times.
The number that reliably summoned a French recording and absolutely nothing else.
I looked at 715.
I looked at the intercom.
I looked at the Amazon packages.
For a moment, I felt that all parties had now contributed everything they reasonably could.
I was just about to take the delivery photo and leave when suddenly:
BZZZZZZZ.
The door unlocked.
No explanation.
No new code.
No breakthrough.
No satisfying conclusion to the puzzle.
Just:
BZZZZZZZ.
As though the building itself had finally decided:
“Okay, fine. He tried.”
Very Canadian, really.
No confrontation.
No admission that anything was wrong.
Just quiet administrative mercy.
I went inside, took the elevator to the seventh floor, found apartment 715, placed the order carefully by the door, and took the required photo.
Then I left.
Quickly.
Not because I was in a hurry.
I simply did not want the apartment door to open.
By that point, my face was no longer suitable for customer service.
The app expects professionalism.
My facial expression had moved into a different department.
So I pressed the elevator button, waited, stepped inside, and disappeared before anyone could come out and say:
“Was everything okay?”
Yes.
Absolutely.
Everything was perfect.
The buzzer code was Lambert.
The actual code was 715.
715 didn’t work.
Then it did.
Eventually.
On the ground floor, the Amazon packages were still sitting by the entrance.
I looked at them differently now.
Not with pity.
With respect.
We had all faced the same system.
They had simply reached their conclusion faster.
Sometimes the smartest delivery instruction is the one nobody actually writes:
If the buzzer makes no sense, leave it downstairs and move on with your life.