ReviewIt4You

No Soliciting!

Seriously!  I am sitting at my desk trying to work and this young lady in her early 20′s strolls up to my house and rings the doorbell.  I can see her from my office.  I don’t recognize her and she is hauling a clipboard.  I am guessing that she is probably selling something.  I am too busy to deal with a solicitor, so I ignore the doorbell.  She rings it again.  I continue to ignore it.  Finally, she starts banging on the door.  You would think after 3 rounds with the doorbell I am REALLY either not interested or not home.  She begins to bang on the door… hard.  I ignore it until she does it the third time.

I stomp to the door.  She has to hear my footsteps, as I am fuming by now.  I throw open the door and my cat goes darting out.  She just stands there staring while I retrieve the run-away kitten.  If I don’t catch him, I could face a fine in my neighborhood.  He doesn’t want to be caught, so I end up with scratches.

While I am wrestling with the cat, the “conversation” goes something like this:

Her: “Are you the mom of the house?”
Me :”Just tell me what you are selling.”
Her: “I am the neighborhood book lady and I sell children’s books.” It’s clear she’s not from MY neighborhood, she’s not MY neighborhood’s book lady.
Me: “My kids have outgrown children’s books.”  I begin to shut the door as the cat almost made it out again and I am obviously not interested.
Her: (Grabs the screen door to keep me from closing it.) “Can you tell me which ones of these people are empty nesters so I don’t waste my time?”
Me: I am still fighting with a restless kitten that scratches the mess out of me trying to get to the door.  At this point, I could care less about HER time.  She obviously doesn’t care about mine.  However, my next door neighbor is gravely ill and on hospice.  I don’t want them troubled.  The rest of them are not at home or have no children.  I do tell her to avoid the house will the sick neighbor, but tell her I don’t know what my neighbors would be interested in.
Her: (Pressing the issue) “You don’t which of your neighbors have small children?”
Me: My kids are too old to play with small children, so, as I said, you will just have to ask them yourself – and I promptly get scratched… again.

This girl just couldn’t take a hint and, by this point, I would not buy water from her if I was on fire!

Now, my family loves scouts.  I will buy girl scout cookies all day long – and have bought them from more than one girl in a season.  In fact, my own daughter is a scout.  Last year, we bought over $100 worth of cookies from her – and then still bought from each of the scouts that visited us.  I gave them away on the site.  I also buy Christmas wreaths from the boy scouts.  My own kids are in school, so I don’t buy all the school sales stuff unless I get it from them.  If a politician comes to my door, he or she just lost my vote (if they had it to begin with).  I don’t donate to door-to-door charities.  I give through local charities I am familiar with and the only people I talk religion with is my friends or family.  In short, if you are a solicitor, I don’t need what your selling (unless you are selling cookies or wreaths for the scouts.)

At any rate, I went through the effort to print up a sign for my front door.  I thought I would share it with like-minded people.  You can either click on the picture above, or download it from right here.  Enjoy – and hopefully, it will stave off the solicitors!