More on UPS
Mary Anne told me she thinks that whether UPS will leave packages depends on how paranoid the local UPS people are. Will told me that his local driver gave him a stack of forms to fill out and leave on the door, which sounds pretty much like a signature waiver to me, which is exactly what I was asking for. I'm now guessing that such a form exists for houses, but not for apartments, and that Will's driver decided to treat him like someone living in a house. (At least, the local UPS management told me that there was a different policy for houses when I talked to them before.)
Armed with Will's information, I just called the UPS customer service 800 number. Unfortunately, they agreed with my local management people, mostly. They said that if the driver drops off a package and doesn't get an in-person signature, then that driver is fully responsible for the package; some drivers may be willing to risk it, but it's their responsibility if the package goes astray.
I spent a good ten minutes on the phone with a ridiculously unhelpful junior service person, who said "y'know" at least three times per sentence. I should've escalated to someone with some actual knowledge, but it was 5:30 p.m. on a Monday and it didn't seem worth it. But Miss Y'Know said there's no such form, and I have to talk to my local office if I want to try to make special arrangements. Really, that was her response to everything I asked: go talk to your local office. She seemed uninterested in the fact that my local office were the ones who'd told me this couldn't be done, or the fact that it was being done (by Will) and that therefore the local office was wrong to at least some degree.
I asked if there was some way that a customer could register a formal request for policy change, and she said no, and when I said "Uh, what?" she said I would have to talk to my local office. (Who were the ones who told me I would have to talk to the main corporate office if I wanted to register disapproval with their policies.) I eventually figured out that she thought I was asking for the same thing again, with "policy change" meaning "exception in my particular case," so I explained that no, I wanted to ask them to officially relax their stance for everyone, not just me. If a customer explicitly states that they are willing to risk having a package left at their door, I don't see why it should be up to UPS to tell them they can't take that risk, particularly given that Airborne Express and FedEx are perfectly happy to take signature waivers in exactly the same circumstances. I pointed out that I avoid using UPS any more entirely because of this policy.
I finally got her to agree to relay my policy-change request to her supervisor. But I have little doubt that she forgot that promise the moment I hung up. Oh, well; I suppose I'll just have to fall back on plan A, avoiding UPS whenever possible, and plan B, befriending my driver. Perhaps I'll leave some cookies for him next time.
Bureaucracy. Feh.