There was a knock at the front door. The door that welcomes you to my home with a brick path flanked by day lillies, fluttering moths and lazy streams of sunshine streaking across the grass. It's the kind of house that seems to sigh, Come on in, with the falling of every rose petal.
My house and I are very different. I just want people to screw off.
If I know you, that's one thing. But if you walk up my pretty path looking to sell me, convince me, switch me or beg me you can either turn around and go away or prepare to get your ass kicked by a spinning and kicking tiny blonde blur. This is my house, my home. It isn't a drop in centre for people who think I have money that I just don't want anymore. And no ... I don't make exceptions for charities. I have my preferred charities and nothing makes me feel less charitable than you standing on my porch making me feel like an asshole because you aren't one of them.
Also if I wanted to switch cable providers do you know what I'd do? I'd switch cable providers, on my own, from the comfort of my binge watching couch at 2:00 in the morning after having problems bringing up the latest season of House of Cards. That is what I would do.
So finally, the other night after a particularly curious encounter at my door I said this is stupid. I'm old. I'm allowed to do things old crotchety people would do. I already save tin foil ... I'm halfway there to old person crazy.
I sat down and whipped up a No Soliciting sign. It had lots of swear words and I guess if taken out of context could possibly have been viewed as a hate crime, but only towards people with fake laminated badges. Something about strangling, and burying, and Kimchi, strangely enough. I don't know, I can't really remember, I was in a bit of a state. Luckily, just when I was about to laminate it up, I also sobered up and decided to take another, less aggressive crack at it. I mean I'm old and crotchety, but I'm not that old and crotchety.
And this is what I came up with.
Download one of the PDFs below to print your own
And not to worry. I still laminated the other one and put it in a shoe box. As soon as I start getting annoyed with kids stepping on my grass or making a lot of "racket", I'll know the day has come to crack it open.
Have a good weekend!
Tigermom
This is a hot button for me (and many others, apparently). My home is my sanctuary and I make it a policy to never purchase anything from anyone who bothers me in it by either ringing the doorbell or calling me on the phone.
I finally made a sign one evening after we had a fifth roofer knock on our door in the space of an hour and a half after our neighborhood had recently been hit by a major hailstorm that meant everyone needed their roof replaced. (That was a noisy summer.) I was pretty crazed so I think my psychotic scrawl helped scare them away. I do remember one idiot who failed to heed the sign. Thinking back now, he may not have been able to read. I managed to make may my point to him verbally.
I wish I could prevent the survey takers and politicians from calling. We apparently fall in to some demographic that makes our opinion of great interest these people. I cut them off and tell them that we are private people and don't give out our views and ask them to please remove us from their list. And when we got our current landline number around four years ago we didn't realize it was the former number of some deadbeat named Timothy Martin (that's right, I'm putting his name out there!) so now, every time his unpaid debt gets sold to a different collection agency we start getting collection agency calls for him. I explain to them the length of time we've had this number and ask them to tell him I said to pay his freaking bills if they ever find him.
I don't even buy girl scout cookies anymore. They quit using any butter to make them or something and now they're just nasty to me. : /
Thanks for the opportunity to rant. Apparently I needed to vent.
IRS
Oh, TM, I feel your pain. About everything, but mostly the collection calls. And I have very bad news for you. It never stops. "Our" deadbeat is named Victor Boateng, and I doubt he ever actually had our number, but just gave out a fake one, which happens to be ours. (It's easy to remember, which is why we chose it.) We have had the number since 1999, and Victor's creditors only started calling in 2008. Yup, 7 &@$?! years ago! We can't make it stop. We have tried ignoring the calls, but there are so many, we can't keep track of all the numbers on the caller ID. That mostly just leads to nasty messages on the answering machine, plus they call from very early to very late. We have tried answering the calls, and telling them that we have nothing to do with Verminous Victor, as we have taken to calling him, but they either don't believe us, or if they do remove us from their list, 3 other debt collectors quickly take their place. This guy has managed to run up debts at every bank, credit card, store and cell service provider on the continent, by the sound of it. I have told these collection agencies that if I knew where Victor was, I would club him over the head with a cast iron frying pan, hog tie him, and personally deliver him to their offices. We even considered changing our number at one point, but with our luck, the new number would be used by an even bigger deadbeat. Just another reason why I am perpetually surly, snide and sarcastic. People suck, and dogs rule.
Nicole
I have a metal sign above the gate entrance that says "Family, Friends and Girl Scouts Welcome". Occasionally, I still have to explain to people that they belong to NONE of those categories but,generally, it works pretty well. I might still print out your sign,though.
maggie van sickle
I live way out in the country on a winding road sort of in the bush and our street does not even show up on a GPS. which is a good thing except when friends from home are trying to find you for the first time or even the 2nd and 3rd time. We have to give them written instructions. I love it. We live on Buckhorn Lake and it is not easy to find by water either. I guess you need to move up here Karen we have lots of garden space and no sales people. Just sayin.
Erin
Sounds like our place, too! Not so great when you are expecting a delivery of kitchen cabinets, but otherwise does tend to weed out the run-of-the-mill salespeople. On the other hand, we have had several lost hikers show up over the years.
Julia at Home on 129 Acres
This is our place too. Moving to the country is the best way to avoid door-to-door soliciting. However, we did have one very determined religious group find our place and drive all the way up our driveway. After I sent them on their way, they couldn't figure out how to turn around to get out, and they ended up crushing the solar lights we had edging our driveway. We now have a gate at the bottom of the driveway, and it's pretty much always locked.
(BTW, love Buckhorn Lake. We used to be on Balsam. That's such a great spot of Ontario).
Lifesart
So good to hear! We just moved to a slightly more suburban setting, but we are at the end of the road, with a long driveway and "No Trespassing" "Private Property" signs by the road. So far, so good, though it's only been a month. At our old home, the preaching people were prevalent, and I'd usually tell them my ankle monitor wouldn't allow me to open the door! Then we put up a "No Soliciting" sign and the yutzes would say "I'm not soliciting" and I'd hand them a piece of paper with the definition printed on it. That got old pretty fast. So glad to have left that part of the world!
Beckie
Well, now I know where the "Girl Guides" from the prayer we said at the end of Girl Scout meetings were at!!
I guess my house doesn't look welcoming...I don't get any solicitors. I used to get some religious folks, until I said they could come in and talk, as long as *I* got to talk about my beliefs for the same amount of time. No one ever took me up on that. Kinda interesting.
I hope your sign works!
Kim
Awesome post as usual! So glad I found you and all your hilarious minions! Have a great weekend!
Janis
I did the exact same thing a few months ago.....I'd just had enough with the knocks.....and don't you HATE that "I'm a friend just popping by to say hello" knock some of them do! I even had one in the pitch dark at 9:45pm.....are you kidding me....do they really think that is going to end well! So I grabbed some of my kids markers and the back of something or other and scratched out a similar sign, right down to the Girl Guide cookies(those I never say no to). But yours is nicer and will be on my door ASAP, thank you for being crotchety!
Edith
This is hilarious, the post and the comments. You guys are great!
We live across the street from a high school, and the kids that are too young to smoke in public hide in our back yard and spit and throw the butts all over the place. Husband says they spit all the time, because that is what you do when your a beginner.
I think I should come up with a sign, too.
billy sharpstick
I saw a sign once that said "Night shift worker lives here. Every third salesman will be shot. The second one just left."
My dad got tired of the local cult members knocking on our door and met them at the door with his shotgun once. Apparently they keep track of those kind of things. They never showed up again over thirty years or so.
As for girl scout, etc. cookies, you're better off just giving them a dollar. The bakeries that they get the cookies from are seriously ripping them off. Unless you really really like those cookies and have trouble making little girls cry. Or their mothers you work with.
Kim
Hi Karen!....LOVE this! I was born with a crotchety old introverted soul so I completely understand. I grew up in the country on a farm where you're nearest neighbor, usually a family member, was at least a mile away and even they called before coming over. I live in an urban condo now to be close to work so I very much miss the quiet of the countrysid. After I've spent my entire day dealing with dozens of people and all their drama I just want to be left alone in the peace, quiet and solitude of my home. There are some years I go so far as to turn off my porch light and take up my jack-o-lantern on Halloween, which is the epitome of old and crotchety LOL.
Julie G
I had a really miserable day yesterday and today wasnt shaping up brilliantly but then I got the email about a new pits and have been giggling ever since. I think I've found my peeps!
Karen
Yup. Here we are. :) ~ karen!
Barb
Our front door opens to an an atrium where we used to keep our talking cockatoo and parrot. Four other doors open from the atrium to various parts of the house. One day after the doorbell rang, I took longer than usual to answer it because I was at the far end of the house. When I opened the inside door, the delivery man was engaged in a frustrating conversation with our birds! I opened the outside door and he looked at me in distress. When he glanced past me and saw the birds, he laughed and said he thought he had been talking to a retarded person. I assured him that my birds were not retarded, but I couldn't vouch for people who took their conversation seriously.
Lynn (really spelled w/ an "e", but somebody else already has that spelling on here)
Laughed til I cried when I read your post!!
IRS
Speaking of old, I am ancient enough to remember the advice columnist Ann Landers (remember her?), who used to have a daily column in the paper (remember newspapers?), and who had perhaps the best, most direct, and most polite motto. It would also make a great sign. She said that "if you are uninvited and unexpected, then you are unwelcome". To which I would add, "so don't ring the f@&?ing doorbell!"
Auntiepatch
I love this, too!
Sue
I'm older than dirt and REALLY don't like unexpected visitors to my door. Would love to see your first sign, because it sounds divine. It might replace the current one on my door that says
"Trespassers Will Be Shot...Survivors Will Be Shot Again"
Auntiepatch
OMG!!! I love that!
Cynthia Jones
Great sign and necessary. I do think some will use their banter of linguistics to tell you that the sign cannot possibly mean them as they are not "soliciting' anything, they are making you an offer or tryiing to save you money.
This is why my sign says "No Door to Door Callers Are Welcome". I softened it by painting the words in nice colours to match the house and painting twirling ivy around the edges. I also have a smaller sign on the letterbox saying "No Junk Mail", which included community newspapers.
I dont know if you guys have annoying people who set up in shopping centres (I think you call them malls) and try to call you over or suck you in by complimenting you on your hair. We do. This enrages me as all want is a clear path to the supermarket where I can beam in on some coriander/cilantro (jeez peoples, let's get our words aligned) and a wheel of camembert and bugger off back out of there.
This is when I try to get them to see the error of their ways and tell them that the law says they are only allowed to stand there and smile at me. Any further interaction or attempts at conversations that will lead to them encouraging me to give them my money is "Soliciting" , which is the same as prostitution and is not manners and not allowed.
They usually argue, so I march off to the Centre Management Office and make my official complaint. It's a mission I am on.
On another note, my front gate is protected by my sign, but as I have a large frontage and a driveway the invisible, sneaky community newspaper deliverer assumes my driveways equates to another entrance and drops a community newspaper there every Thursday. I haven't caught the bastard yet, though I wrote in four foot high letters in the dirt "Definitely No Newspapers" , he slipped me one.
I am making a sign for the driveway this weekend. If this does not work I will sit all day Thursday behind the car and crash-tackle him.
IRS
When the kiosk people at the mall approach me, I give them a big smile and say, "How nice! You're the first person who's talked to me since I got out of the isolation ward!" They quickly find a new target.
BethH
Coriander is the seed of the cilantro plant.
GreenG
Coriander is actually what people outside of north America call cilantro, not just the seed.
BethH
Silly North Americans.
Cynthia Jones
Yep, we use the whole plant and we call it Coriander.
Pam'a
There was a company here who used to drop a completely useless paper on everyone's yard once a week. I tried opting out several times, to no avail. Finally, I called them and told them the next time they threw one in my yard I was taking them to court for littering.
That worked.
As for solicitors, that's what sidelights (those windows on each side of the door with lace curtains over them) are for-- I can walk up, take a look, and walk away. No one's the wiser.
Mindy
Yes, yes, and yes. Can you make a sign that answers my phone, too?
Grammy
Karen, you are not old. It's just that because you're crotchety you feel old. But there is nothing wrong with being young and crotchety, or even middle-aged and crotchety. If people are going to invade our private spaces, they're going to have to realize that they've caused all the rest of us to be crotchety. They should go door-to-door apologizing.
jkw
Why would I want American spelling? Canadian spelling would lead them to believe a mean old English lady lives here. It is my firm conviction that just because someone rings my bell, I don't have to answer it. Same for the phone. And believe you me, if I was having chemo, I would NOT answer.
Teri
I had to open both signs to see where the differences were. it is the Girl Guide/ Girl Scout difference, not the neighbour/neighbor difference.
Nancy Blue Moon
Hmmmm...I suspected you were old and crotchety for quite some time now... at least you aren't scaring little girls away yet...what happens if the poor little things have run out of cookies????..Down the creepy basement stairs with them I'm guessing..
Lori
Awesome sign. I would love to see the first draft. I bet it's great!
Karen too (I am also named Karen)
If Jesus himself showed up, looking all hunky, I might just let him in, but nobody else. I've heard he's kinda cute.
Jacquie
I've heard the same, if you're in to that whole facial hair look.
Lifesart
Oh, now I've heard she has lovely eyes.