Parenting

Eh, I save rude for the second "Leave." It's a human being on the other side of the door. Half the time it's some kid who just needed a job summer before college. I say hey, I don't want solar panels right now, have a nice day.

Now, when you tell me to wait, as you stand on my porch, then I'm going to tell you to get off my porch. I still say please though, because my kids might be listening, and I strive to use good manners in all my interactions, in the hopes they will too. You can be firm and polite.

I sympathise that they are currently in a period in their life where they are doing door-to-door sales for a wage.

Yep not to mention they are preying on you feeling rude and will take FULL advantage if you show any opportunity.

salemen use children to pull on your heartstrings. No mercy!

I wish that would happen to me. There's two big companies that service most of my area, one is cable, the other is DSL. The DSL provider, whenever I've checked, only offers 10Mbps download. Big nope from me. Cable has gigabit, but capped at 30mbps upload.

There's a third regional provider that operates in my area that does fiber exclusively (plus a bunch of resellers and wireless providers). The fiber company doesn't serve my address. Just me though.... Well, my side of the street. If I put in my neighbors address into their service form, it says they're capable of getting gigabit up and down for a very reasonable price. I put in mine, and "sorry, we don't serve your address" or whatever. I think that's because the utility poles are on the other side of the street, and they're on the poles, but don't have a permit to cross the street (generally by aerial lines)... Which is what the cable provider did when I finally purchased their service; they ran a line over the road to my house.

Upload is important to me, and 10:1 speeds are fine, but 30:1 or more, no thanks. The plan I went for was 300/30, which is the fastest upload they offer with the slowest download (the 200mbps plan was 20mbps upload or something, and the gigabit was 30mbps upload).... I want fiber.

If that regional fiber company knocked on my door saying that they service my area now, I'd ask where I sign.

And before anyone asks: I contacted them about it and they said something about the permits and blah, and blah. I've tried to contact them several times about how I can help get them the permits to operate in my area more broadly (including my address), but they have not responded. I'm happy to petition my town hall or regional governmental office to push things along or even canvassing for signatures on a petition to give them the required permits to serve the area.... Even paying for a portion of the permit cost if necessary.... Not a word from them.

Feels bad.

Me too. My SO is too fucking nice. I love her for being so nice, but I caught her giving way too much personal info to some random solicitor. When I asked her why she would do that she “felt bad” for him. Nope, not having that, and the sign has worked wonders by preventing all contact in the first place. Can’t feel guilty if you don’t engage.

That would get rid of Jehovah's Witnesses, but I see little reason to think it was would necessarily be effective on salespeople.

If, for some reason, you're unwilling to treat these worthless in-person spammers with the contempt they deserve, my suggestion is to remember that "no" is a complete sentence.

@thesystemisdown right anyone I'm expecting will have called first. Everybody else can fuck right off. XD

I can hear that neighbors kid screaming now, promising never to bother you again

I could never go back to cable and don’t understand what too me so long to cut the cable (yay COViD? For pushing me over that edge). But there are still a lot of people with a lot of inertia. I assume cable companies are just trying to hold onto their remaining customers long enough to build more profit into their internet offerings.

They may also be preying on their elderly customers finding it difficult to make the paradigm jump to streaming

That being said, streaming has a gap in local broadcast coverage that’s more easily filled with cable

• not everyone can, or is aware they can use an antenna
• local streaming like Hulu is expensive
• sports streaming is expensive plus per sport
• I rarely miss local broadcasts, with only a few exceptions such as presidential debates and the Super Bowl