Another day, another bloody door-to-door solicitor who manages to find the most inopportune time to ring the doorbell right as I’m in the middle of a lovely flow of productivity for a property tax appeal.
Ordinarily, I’d let two labradoodles sing a duet of displeasure in their general direction but as they were otherwise engaged one county away…sadly, their singing voices were not an option.
Seeing as my train of thought is already gone straight off the tracks and into the ditch, I figured I’d have a look-see as to which miscreant has dared to disturb the peace of this house.
Truth be told, I’d have seen the guy prowling round out front that was already stepping into my neighbour’s yard and eyeing their door before I’d even opened mine and then turned back to try to regain some semblance of productivity.
This gent who was wearing a dark blue shirt with “Top Notch Roofing Contractors” emblazoned upon it looked to be another in a long line of solicitors who would earn very dark thoughts in their direction.
But what caught my eye was that the truck that brought him to harass our end of the cul-de-sac was parked *IN MY DRIVEWAY* without having been invited to do so or even so much as a by-your-leave.
That’s when we went to plan B and actually opened the door.
I’ll give the salesperson a small modicum of credit…the first word out of his mouth wasn’t my all-time favourite greeting from people who are both strange to me and younger than I am.
That is where my allowance for them ends.
When I asked him if he thought that presuming that he could park in my driveway and then come disturb my peace without so much as a modicum of consideration was a really good idea, his answer wasn’t particularly on point.
He mumbled something about not wanting to cause problems (too late!) and he was offered another opportunity to say the right thing in a situation he’d made horribly wrong.
Yeah, that didn’t happen either.
The guy who was actually driving the truck then decides to honk the horn and the sales guy starts to beat a retreat.
So I offer the driver who is clearly in charge a chance to answer the question I’d put twice to his junior hoping that maybe, just maybe I might actually get a sincere apology.
I’m sure it’ll come as a complete surprise that…yeah…no such luck on that front.
In fact, he decided to double down with something along the lines of “if you don’t want the business” (he certainly wasn’t asking after the services I am known to offer to the paying public so that seemed a bit odd) and a “have a nice day” that was more than a few kilometres from actual sincerity.
A real and sincere apology would have gone a long way toward cleansing the way between us but apparently that was a step too far.
I was already rather pissed off at having been disturbed and it wasn’t helped by two people who should bloody well know better how to handle poor manners on their part. I’m sure the hypoglycaemia and stress-induced headache certainly didn’t help my mood…or come to think of it, what today would be the 80th anniversary.
For these two individuals to make it very clear that somehow the rightful owner of this property who had never invited them upon it in the first place and who they in fact actually disturbed from fruitful work was the only asshole in this situation is completely beyond the pale.
And that’s why they got the most notorious digit of my right hand raised in their direction along with a somewhat loudly voiced opinion that they were in fact the wankers in this situation.
He then drives halfway up the street and then parks up well off the kerb to harass one of my neighbours. It wasn’t enough to completely impede traffic and at least he didn’t pull into their driveway without leave as he had done mine (not that he could, that particular house generally has a driveway completely full of cars!) and gives me this rather cheeky wave.
OK.
Fortunately, their website and contact details were not particularly difficult to find. One cross-reference to the public filings for this LLC at the Secretary of State’s site showed that they have a typo in their ZIP code and that it’s clear they used Wix to build their site (nothing wrong with that per se but linking the social icons for Facebook and LinkedIn to Wix rather than their own accounts is a glaring oversight).
Having found the phone number, I figured I’d ring them up and see if something could be done for the rank discourtesy I’d been shown on my own doorstep.
Sadly, it was straight to voicemail and not being all that keen on leaving one figured I’d leave it at that.
So imagine my surprise when fifteen minutes later, whoever has that phone actually rang me back and once I was able to determine that I wasn’t talking to the same people as had been in that truck that invaded the driveway, I do believe I was able to clearly communicate just how disrespected I’d felt and did apologise for the less-than-stellar response to it on my part. The gentleman at the other end of the line seemed appropriately horrified at their behaviour and ascribed it to likely newer employees but that he’d get to the bottom of the situation.
It’s his choice but I’m of the mind that I wouldn’t trust those two to competently operate a lemonade stand, much less be the public face of a company that likely does five-figure roof renovations.
I’ll give this gent fair marks…he at least allowed this story to end in a much more positive place than it began and I hope those two will take the lesson to heart that disrespecting homeowners on their own land is probably the quickest way to ensure they never wish to do business with you or your company.