lilgish said:

i just put out some tootsie rolls in a jar outside my door with a sign taped to it that says "don't get greedy."

lilgish said:

That's what concierges are for.

Anxiety said:

I dis like it when people pop over. However my best friend is welcome anytime -- then again he always calls first.

Anxiety said:

I still love it when my in-laws call using their cell phones....from right outside our door Hey...I told them to call first right?

I really hate it when someone buzzes and I am

Eating
Have company
sleeping
taking a shower or bath
having sex
watching TV

For some reason I always answer the damn buzzer, but I tell them that I am busy.

No!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not answer my front door..

i dislike unannounced visits but that is because i have a tendancy to stay in my bathrobe for hours on the weekend

two stories...
i lived in a basement apartment for a while a number of years ago. someone rapped on the living room window and just about scared me out of my skin. i ignored it. but then once i had just gone into the bedroom and gotten into bed and there was a rap on my bedroom window. i jumped up and grabbed the phone and went into the bathroom weeks later there was another knock in the livingroom (which i ignored again) but then i could hear a bunch of commotion outside. i stuck my head in the hallway to see police officers searching and the people from the other side of the street all looking out their windows... i guess there had been a naked guy running around. so perhaps i had a flasher all that time

in a different apartment my buzzer went at midnight. i asked who it was - and i thought it sounded like a friend of mine but she was crying. so i stuck my head out in the hallway to see who it was. it was a teenager and she was bleeding. i lived close to a highschool so assumed that some boyfriend had messed her about. i tried to clean her hands but she refused to go to the hospital. her palms were cut like she had hit the ground fast. eventually it came out that she was a streetwalker and had a freaky trick and she jumped out. i could only send her home in a cab but she has haunted me... i wish i would have done more.

No, I don't always answer the door. If I dont want to bothered I dont answer the door or my phone. I have the right.
I dont have to do anything I dont want to.

An old neighbor got upset with me because he knew I was home,but I didnt answer when he knocked.
"I saw you look through the peep hole!! You could have answered!"

He claimed some guy pulled a knife on him and he was alerting everyone.
So...I wont answer the door for the knife guy either.

Normally I would go and check via speaker. I feel compelled to. I dunno why. Esp if it's late and I'm not expecting anyone.

This is what I would normally do. Things have changed. We moved to a place where our speaker and buzzer is broken...we have to physically go see who it is and let them in. One of my friends had the brilliant idea of putting a star sticker on our buzzer so our friends would know which of the 4 buttons to push as there is no name near any of them. Everyone pushed the buzzer. SUre whomever you want...push the one with the STAR on it. I took that off in a jiffy! And because of the whole process of seeing who's at my door is a process, I think it was the 2nd buzz at 4 am only to see some drunk crack head get the wrong address, do I now NOT go and see who it is.

no....mostly because very rarely i have visitors anyway, especially at night. if my apartment buzzer goes off it's mostly because someone was trying to buzz another apartment and they couldn't see the apartment numbers.

i never feel obligated to answer my door or my phone.

i'd definitey freak if someone knocked on my door at night at it's in a private back yard.

the break-in I had a couple of years ago still rattles me when I hear strange noises at night.

madartista said:

Same here. I had nightmares regularly for 2 years and still occasionally get weirded out, and this was five years ago!

Anxiety said:

My buzzer is actually connected to my cell phone. (I've got it set up so that the phone displays "Building Door" when someone is buzzing me.) It makes for some amusing conversations:


Phone: "Ring!"

Me: "Hello?"

Person outside my home in Seattle: [thinking I'm inside the building] "Hi, this is FedEx. I've got a delivery for you."

Me: "I'm actually on the East Coast in Maine at the moment. But I'll buzz you in, and you can leave it with the manager or by the mailboxes." [presses button on phone to unlock door]

madartista said:

yeah, i think that contributes to me getting squirrelly when someone buzzes my apartment at night. when i lived in brooklyn, our apartment was broken into, and an hour or so after the police came, someone buzzed and in my shock, i actually went downstairs and answered the door. i'm pretty sure the guy who robbed us came back to do...i don't KNOW what...but fortunately i wasn't alone at the time and the dude didn't have the balls to mess with two people, i guess. he just kept saying he was a friend of my roommate and needed to come in to get something that belonged to him. at like 4am. it was fucking bizarre. and of course, when i told the cops about this, they did nothing.

anyway, yeah. that fear still kinda lives with me. i think also, i'm still adjusting to being home at night, so the idea of someone just dropping by at 8 or 9pm is completely surreal to me, even if it's harmless or just someone buzzing the wrong apartment.

I live in a house on a hill & up a flight of stairs.It faces a noisy residential street so I usually know when someone shows up just by the sound of their car parking,them coming up the stairs,& opening the front gate.I'm usually peeking through the front window way before that happens .My partner nicknamed me "Gladys" from BeWitched !

matt said:

that's amazing.

if i'm expecting someone i answer the doorbell/buzzer.

but if i'm not expecting company and i'm not dressed or if i'm otherwise busy i choose not to answer.

because usually it's just someone wanting to promote their own agenda at the expense of my time so i don't really feel bad about not answering.....

of course, if someone is screaming for help i'll answer

Anxiety said:

you were right. if you don't feel like it and that person didn't call or leave a message or whatever to see if it was okay then you shouldn't answer if you don't want. i don't like when people just pop in or 'show up'. i'd like to have a bit of control over who i want to see or don't want to see.

A few years ago, a total stranger decided to buzz me around 5 a.m. because the person he wanted to visit wasn't answering. Of course, I wasn't going to buzz an unexpected stranger into the building -- the whole point of the intercom system is to keep them out -- and at the time I was living not too far from one of the "bad" parts of town. (Unfortunately, I was too tired to think of a good way to express my displeasure about his disrupting my sleep.)

He then walked out on the front lawn and started screaming at the building, hoping that the person he was trying to visit would hear him. I should have called the cops, but in my half-awake state I just rolled over and fell back asleep.

It's so funny that on Sundays I'll be up and about in the morning and I'll hear the doorbell ring. I know it's Jehovah Witnesses (I don't have anything against JW's it's just that I don't feel like getting deep in the morning) and my first reaction is to close my eyes and stand real still until they go away.


M

slm4m said:

I'd add pleasuring myself to that list.

Usually I don't answer.
But I do take a quick glance out the window...




...y'know...



...just in case....





...it might be Ed McMahon
holding a giant cardboard check or somethin'.

Illustrator said:

hey, we all have our fetishes, i'm not gonna judge...

I'm annoyed enough to emerge again from lurker status. Watch out.


I completely agree that popping in without calling first has become socially unacceptable. There are exactly two exceptions to that in my life, and they are explicit exceptions. My darling ex-partner, Martin, is actually on my lease and has keys to my apartment. He is literally free to walk in the door any time he feels like it, though in practice, he would never come over without calling unless it were an emergency of some sort. Because he's a courteous person. The other is my girlfriend, Jamie. We understand each other (or, so I believed). She knows that she can call or show up any time, and if I don't want to interact with her, I will simply not answer the phone/door. Right?

So, I was talking with her earlier, informing her of my currently depressed, bitter, and ill (that darn Minneapolis virus that is going around) state. Couple hours later, she calls. I don't answer my phone. I have invited Martin over to eat Indian food out of paper boxes on my floor. That is all of the human interaction I desire for the evening. I nap, I bathe, I crawl into some hideous-but-comfy pajamas that my mom gave me. . . we're talking rubber duckies and little blue bubbles here. . . and proceed to cuddle up with my dog and a magazine. In my home that I have recently moved into, which is still not really put together, and which is extra messy because I was in mpls for the weekend and I am not an organized traveller. Where I am, I believe I may have mentioned, SICK.

*BEEP* Intercom. Must be Martin. "Hello?"

It's Jamie. Fine. Whatever. Hi Jamie. Come on up.

*KNOCK KNOCK*

"HI! I brought my-cute-friend-you've-never-met over to meet you!"



Hi cute friend. Cute friend, meet my cute 90-pound Rotweiler, who LOOKS friendly but who I have trained to eat people who show up unannounced, should I say the word (the word, btw: "rude"). Death look at Jamie. Apologetic look back. Cute friend picks up on death/apologetic looks and starts to emit afraid looks. Jamie realizes I am. . . lessee. . . PISSED. Removes her self and her cute friend from my home.



So, basically, at ANY time of day, no, you do not answer if you don't feel like it. And in the future, I will ask visitors to call me on their cell phones before they buzz the intercom so I know who is buzzing. Because I am a hermit, and my messy, secluded little world is by invitation only. Fer fuck's sake.

no, I have to know that they're coming.....or else I ignore them.

Usually the alligators in my moat keep them away.

TMPletz said:

Anxiety said:

Shucks, do I even answer in the daytime?

ThreadBare said:

i ESPECIALLY don't answer in the daytime. there's nobody i wanna see who'd come calling on a social visit during the day, except maybe on weekends...and even then, they'd better call first.

Anxiety said:

Not even Larry and his Watchtower?