Never answer a ringing phone when your drone returns from shopping without the milk!

The phone rings, we are trained from an early age to answer it.

“Hello” future you says. Dreading of course, that this, in fact, is a sales call.

“Hi, this is your neighbor, just down the street from you.”

“How are you?” you ask, happy to not be winning a cruise or speaking to a pharmacy offering discount heartworm medication for the dog you don’t own.

“Well, we have a small problem.”

“Oh my,” you said, not the neighbor well but concerned because they have an issue.

“You see we have a tree in our backyard that is 151 feet high.”

“Ok,” it is quite conceivable that the utter lack of understanding comes through in the way you say OK.

“Your drone can only fly 148 feet when fully loaded. It has to jettison some of its cargo to make it over that tree.”

Suddenly you are flooded with guilt. You have called the grocery store nine times now to complain that they haven’t delivered your milk. Well that you drone hasn’t had the milk when it landed in the back yard. “oh,” you respond the request for the nine phone calls and the realization that your done doesn’t land to jettison its load.

“The tree is on the other side of my yard, and frankly your done has dumped the milk on my kids nine times now. It has made our swing set into a sticky smelling rotting milk mess.” The voice not pleased continues “Can you do something about that?”

You are glad for a moment that phones have mute buttons as you laugh, the image of small children running around in a rain of milk is, well funny. “Of course, I will make sure that they send the groceries in two drone runs instead of one. Please apologize to your wife and children for the inconvenience of milk falling from the sky.”

“They understand, they would just like to play outside without getting wet.”

“My deepest apologies again.”

“It’s ok, the neighborhood on the other side of you that makes cookies is the real problem. They order the big things of molasses. The drone has to dump half the load of molasses on its way over the tree, so the milk washes some of the molasses off.”

Thank you mute button you imagine stick molasses falling from the sky coating his children.

“Again I am so sorry. We will fix this!”

“Thanks” The click of a line going dead.

A conversation that is both interesting, comical and well probably never going to happen. It is probably, however, the script for a future movie. Can I get Brad Pitt to star as me?

Last month I talked about the need for drone governance. We have many beginning rules for drones in many states. We need more. The ever growing reality of drone delivery means there needs to be at least some measure of control. Otherwise, we are all going to be sitting on our front porches waiting for our drone delivered dinner, while our neighbors are avoiding the drone launched burritos falling around their yard.