r/mildlyinfuriating • u/BulkheadRed • 1d ago

Winter is Coming Door-to-door salesman steps over the tape blocking off my freshly painted steps

I spent over 20 hours prepping, sanding, and painting my front steps while the weather is still good before winter, including taking two afternoons off work to get the job done before it's too cold. I just finished the job this afternoon and the paint is still tacky.

There is a long strip of painters tape attached to a paint can very obviously blocking off the stairs when you're facing it.

I have NO Halloween decorations up yet either.

Edit: for everyone saying it's not enough or my tape job is shit, it's like a 45 degree angle across the steps, and it's not a construction zone, it's my house. If you walked up to a piece of tape blocking your path at a residence where you weren't invited, you would probably at least second guess whether you should be proceeding forward. Thankfully, it's mostly dry and there is no need for rework as far as I can tell. That's what makes it mildly infuriating. He COULD have done damage, but it doesn't look like he did.

Edit 2: this is also not a common occurrence. I get MAYBE one knock a month on my door unsolicited. It just unfortunately happened to be the one day I had painted. It wasn't an expected situation. This was a mere just in case measure. Small town Canada.

[OC]

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45

u/SamOfXanadu 23h ago

...The weirdest part about all this is I learned there are still door to door salesmen. Did he offer you some brushes? ... Oh my god memory unlocked. There was this guy when I was a kid that used to come around and sell odds and ends toys etc. thank you random person!

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u/TrustInRoy 22h ago

It happens so frequently in my city that I had to put up a No Soliciting sign.

Which at least 3 salesmen, and 1 vote canvasser, have ignored recently.

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u/RawrRRitchie 17h ago edited 17h ago

You need to answer the door and tap the sign and say"can you fucking read or are you just a moron"

You get to have all sorts of fun with the ones that ignore it..insult them ask them why the education system failed them

Be so rude they regret knocking or ringing your bell

Or take the creepy route "you don't look like the client that requested me, oh well you're not the first person to catfish and you won't be the last come on inside I got the chains ready to go, did you want the leather or metal restraints? you wanted to be dominated right?

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u/Budget_Persimmon_195 16h ago

probably just morons which is why they are door to door "sales" "men"

3

u/1d3333 16h ago

They’re also just trained to ignore those signs

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u/Horton_Takes_A_Poo 13h ago

Exactly right. Door to door salespeople aren’t real people, they don’t have souls. You don’t have to feel bad about being mean to them. Same with those people who try to sell you cellphones at Costco.

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u/SheilaGirl70 8h ago

The salespeople at Costco annoy me. The second I see them I whip out my phone and pretend to have a conversation with my husband as I walk by. I do this with solicitors outside of grocery stores and any other establishment where they lurk.

1

u/Horton_Takes_A_Poo 7h ago

That’s giving them too much courtesy. Makes them think they are real people who are just being ignored. You have to ignore them in a way that makes them question if they’re even the same species of human.

1

u/chopsuirak 13h ago

I had one ignore my sign that was selling "at home textbooks"

I asked if they had one for English and she didn't get the joke til I shut the door.

1

u/aerdvarkk 12h ago

The whole point of the sign is so that they don;t need to be disturbed or open the door to deal with anyone. Engaging with the uneducated idiots defeats the point of the sign. That doesn't make it fun.

2

u/Sensitive_Low3558 15h ago

No soliciting doesn’t apply to vote canvassers, you need to put a sign that says no canvassing if you don’t want to be canvassed. Soliciting specifically means sales.

1

u/dantheother 21h ago

Time to upgrade to a No Soliciting sign attached to a wiffle bat?

1

u/NotAGoodEmployeee 21h ago

I put a “kids asleep don’t get the dog involved” sign on and that usually helps. Every so often I get an idiot.

1

u/Nirast25 20h ago

"No soliciting. Solicitors will be paintballed in the scrotum."

1

u/AppropriateCap8891 20h ago

I had the same thing, and would actually cuss out those that ignored it and knocked on my door anyways.

Especially as right below it was a sign clearly saying "DAY SLEEPER".

If you think knocking on my door when I am asleep after a long night of work is going to make me want to listen to anything you have to tell me, you are a moron. Makes me want to find out who they are, and go pounding on their doors at 3 in the morning.

1

u/I_Heart_Sleeping_ 17h ago

I answer the door to these fucks in my underwear because 1 they always show up when I’m about to pass out (I work nights) and 2 it makes sure they never come back.

Nothing scares people off like seeing a slightly overweight Harry 37 year old in his underwear.

1

u/aerdvarkk 12h ago

But are you sure those people can read?

1

u/bonnybedlam 8h ago

I always have a sign up. I change them a couple of times a year so they stay fresh and they’re usually kind of funny. I make very clear who is welcome to knock and who should just go away. Without fail the people who should go away knock and tell me how much they like the sign. So I know they read it, and yet I don’t see any pizza or kittens.

1

u/mx023 6h ago

I recently hired an ex door to door salesman and he said he was told to say he never saw the signs

14

u/Useful_Boysenberry14 22h ago edited 10h ago

I get them all the time at my house. I started having seizures a few years ago and need to nap after bad ones. They would ring my doorbell like 5 times and wake me up. I had to get an official non solicitor sign from the sheriff so they would leave me alone. The sign makes it so the sheriff can go shake them down for money if they solicit me and ignore the sign, not that I’ve ever reported the few who have ignored it.

Edit: someone keeps leaving and deleting comments about the sheriff thing. It’s a thing in my city. It’s really a no trespassing sign with a no solicitation thing on it. Since it’s official it’s easier to prosecute them for trespassing. The sheriff gets money from the fine.

10

u/DamGoodAnimation 22h ago

Literally had someone scare the shit out of girlfriend while I was at work today. Door-to-door sales guy banged on the door of our apartment so loud and so long that she called me at work thinking she was in danger.

Got home an hour later to 5 realtor business cards wedged into the door of our apartment. Read that again: 5 business cards. For a realtor. In the door of the apartment I rent.

Door-to-door salesmen definitely still exist, and they’re dumb as fuck.

5

u/RawrRRitchie 17h ago

A realtor going to apartments to trying to get people who are looking to buy a house isn't that unusual.. Leaving 5 cards at one address is definitely the dumb part there

4

u/DamGoodAnimation 17h ago

Yeah I figured that’s the pitch, but I live in the hood. Neither me nor my neighbors can afford a house in this economy

6

u/Ok_Fig7692 22h ago

Our town and the next one over get them sometimes - usually selling solar, roofing or internet. Both our towns do require that they get a permit to solicit for a day or two, though. No permit, no soliciting.

6

u/TK_Punch_ 21h ago

I just don’t understand the business model for that shit. Who buys anything from the person who is annoying you? If I wanted the product, I use the internet to find the best price, period.

1

u/Ok_Fig7692 21h ago

I agree. I also deal with scammers and people potentially getting scammed through my line of work. I get the calls myself - I swear I get at least 1 - 2 calls trying to sell home improvements every day on my business line.

I can't imagine who would fall for someone cold-calling to sell home repairs and probably looking to gather personal info, a deposit, or the like. But I guess enough people fall for it that the scammers keep doing it.

1

u/RawrRRitchie 17h ago

As hard as it is to believe, not everyone has access to the internet

1

u/SuperCruisePanther 17h ago

It's more of a sale by immediacy thing. I've bought services from door to door salesmen twice in my life: once when I had moved into a new home and discovered that ants get real bad in that area. I had already planned to hire a guy to take car of it but one just walked up and said "hey I see you have ant hills. Want me to take care of it?" and he just did it right then and there.

The other was a guy who offered to plow my driveway when it snowed in winter. Said no at first, realized I hated shoveling after the first few snows that winter and called him back lol.

2

u/Malkmus1979 21h ago

Oh my god the solar guys in my neighborhood…

6

u/Rightintheend 21h ago

 I get idiots from T-Mobile and Verizon all the time.  That and some weird church.

2

u/Dramatic_Airline84 20h ago

Religious chuds are the worst. "Sorry, we all full up on our own crazy..."

1

u/Rightintheend 11h ago

They will actually clasp their hands around their face, and stick it to the window to look inside. And then go around to our back door, which you can get to without going behind the fence, and bang on that and then try to look inside again. 

1

u/PiDicus_Rex 12h ago

Hang on,... are there any churches that aren't weird?

4

u/lovemeganjoy 23h ago

We get them all the time in the summer. The last ones I talked to tried to sell me a limited time deal on solar panels for my roof.

3

u/SupportCa2A 22h ago

The ones I get are usually trying to sell me solar panels 

3

u/Frosty_Mongoose9055 22h ago

They unfortunately still wander the streets

1

u/MudInfinite8791 21h ago

I get them constantly. They want to sell me Windows, Lawn Treatment, Roofing, Home Security, Landscaping, all kinds of shit. I now have a no soliciting sign on my door. I just have 0 interest in dealing with them.

The straw that broke me was when my dog had to be put down, I was reeling with grief with my wife and kids(fuck cancer) and this guy would not fuck off.

1

u/acrobat2126 21h ago

Those odd and ends toys were stolen. That was a crack head.

1

u/SamOfXanadu 6h ago

.... No. This is back in the late '80s or early 90s. And if you've ever seen DuckTales this dude reminded me of Filler Brushbill. He was that good

0

u/acrobat2126 2h ago

You are still describing a CRACK HEAD. They would bring VCR's and Computers to my door. One time a guy brought an entire piano.

1

u/Scrounger_HT 20h ago

we get a shitload of door knockers, in between people trying to do home repair or lawn care or insect blah blah blah or roofers or political and religious shit. we live in a nicer neighborhood in town so i assume that has something to do with it but we do all our own shit, i generally open the door listen to the spiel tell them no thank you politely and tell them to have a nice day, when they inevitably try and continue pushing i tell them no thank you and to have a nice day a little louder, i assume they didn't hear me the first time. when they continue to push for a third time i let them have it till they leave. last time this happened a guy from terminex wanted to fight me.

1

u/Exilicauda 20h ago

A company tried to hire me for a door to door sales position. They invited me to an online group interview out of nowhere. I assumed I'd applied and forgotten. Company page said nothing about the work just opportunities for growth and advancement. Decided to do the interview anyway and I had to ask what the job actually was three different times before they told me it was door to door sales for fiber internet. I immediately ended the interview.

So yeah apparently alive and well

1

u/Budget_Persimmon_195 16h ago

they still sell kirby vacuums like this

1

u/Head_Razzmatazz7174 9h ago

I got a knock on my door from a guy promoting electric service. The best part was I was already using the service he was selling. I asked him, "if you know of a way to help my lower my bill, I'm all ears."

1

u/Admirable-Ad7152 9h ago

Usually Solar Panels or Energy Efficient Windows

1

u/sparklingdinoturd 7h ago

These days they're usually trying to sell you a service, not a product.

1

u/TimeZarg 6h ago

Yeah, they still exist, and they do have success with people on occasion, which is why they still do it. The product may even be legitimate, though it's probably not something you actually needed, but got talked into it by the salesman. My father was sorta vulnerable to that. Kirby vacuum salesmen selling him their latest model to replace the current Kirby he had (we were a Kirby family, for sure), vacuum-packed frozen steaks sold and shipped in bulk boxes (would actually consider that if I had freezer space and they offered a competitive price vs fresh), more energy-efficient but less powerful house fan to replace old, loud, but big and powerful one... to name a few things off the top of my head.

I've had to say 'no' to a couple of salesmen myself since my father passed and I'm the homeowner now. Usually solar panels (or energy-adjacent something) or exterminators. The latest was an exterminator who, amusingly, kept tacking on discounts on first service and subsequent service, clearly trying to get me to say 'yes'.

I'm usually content to give a salesman a little time to do their schtick in the off-chance it's something I actually want, and as long as they're polite and chill about it. That's mostly because I don't get that many in general, if they were more common I'd be quicker to tell them to fuck off.

1

u/top_value7293 5h ago

I have people coming to my door trying to sell me services and stuff constantly. I hate it. Pest control guys. Window sales guys. Tree trimmer guys. Do you need a new Roof guys. Do you need new internet guys. Energy company guys. I always want to have my door open to let sun and light in but I then I have to deal with this bullshit. It’s ridiculous

1

u/DrunkenDude123 1h ago

One time when I was a kid in the early 90s my mom let a salesman demonstrate his tile cleaning spray. He used it on one of our front entry tiles and a little bit of the grout on the edges. Looked better for sure, but she didn’t buy it bc it was super pricey and scammy, and her and my dad had to buy commercial spray to make the rest of the tiles look evenly cleaned