Every now and then around five in the evening I will have someone’s suffering ass on the table and hear a knock on the door. Sometimes I order things delivered by Fed Ex, which likes you to sign for stuff, but usually it is somebody with a clipboard.
I hate these clipboard people. They are always fresh-faced studenty types who want to tell me how I can help them save the world by signing a petition and writing a check for twenty bucks or so. Some of these organizations have been annoying me since I was the age of the current crop of knockers (you should pardon me). I usually agree with most of their goals and I have usually done whatever I can to support those goals, which is not much considering my budget. I don’t know why in the year 2010, with the Internet and all, people still send young yo-yo’s around with clipboards to trouble my repose.
I always tell them to please go bye bye because I work from home and am working right this minute, since it’s usually true. I hate to upset the client by yelling Fuck Off.
I guess people who believe they are saving the world just cannot stop to read my well weathered No Soliciting sign. I taped up a little neon post-it to get their attention.
Sixteen Tons 
Maybe they see “No soliciting” and they think “I’m not planning to be soliciting any prostitutes here, I’m just here to get signatures for my world-changing petition.” We tend to trust too much that people know the same words we do.
Maybe they’re actually in rejection therapy and this is part of the treatment.
I wish there was a similar way to ward off telemarketers. I don’t even bother answering my landline phone anymore.
I no longer even have a landline
I got my landline installed and working for less than 24 hours when the first telepest called.
A couple of days latter I get another telemarketing call and the person actually started to argue with me when I told them they could not speak with me.
Caller ID is one of the best things ever invented.
We decided on our charity giving a few years ago and have a monthly debit – cold callers are informed of this ….. politely of course.
I have to agree with RF there. You might want to include a photocopy of the relevant page from the dictionary next to the Post-It note.
Nice touch. I just don’t answer my door… and I got rid of my landline. Some people are rude and self-assuming, narcissistic and arrogant. They could care less about your sign. After all, their business is what really matters.
Soliciting connotes buying things, but since they’re asking for donations they think they’re within their right to bother you. So I would make it clear that you don’t want them asking for donations and tell all of them a stern “No” so that word gets around. Point to the sign and tell them that includes donations. Maybe they’ll figure it out in time. Either that or get a very large and menacing dog! ;-/.
I hate dogs much, much more than I do solicitors of any kind. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Word never gets around in an area as big as this, but you’re right on the mark about the imagined “donations” exception, I think. You know, if it’s “doing good.” I don’t even buy Girl Scout Cookies.
I deal with Mormons and 7th Day Adventists by actually inviting them to the porch and then witnessing to them. They don’t come back for some strange reason.
I once read the palm of a Hare Krishna back in college, when it was much harder to avoid such people. It drove him fairly buggy.
Feed them ganja cakes, like that guy in Australia did. Would make for an interesting moment.
I’ll have to look that up. I did hear a story recently about a lady who asked Christian door knockers for all the different Chick tracts they could give her because they were such fun to read when stoned.
It a hundred yards from the edge of the cul de sac to my front door. There are only three houses on the cul de sac. The cul de sac is four hundred yards down a non-County road. We don’t get much in the way of unsolicited solicitation. But I did get a pair of Mormons once and gave them my usual line about Joseph Smith being a brilliant inspiration for P.T. Barnum and L. Ron Hubbard. Not a long conversation.
Telepests no longer even get a polite no thanks from me. Easier for them AND me if I just hang up.
Anyway, re your sign, I honestly don’t think many people grok “soliciting”. Something like “No salespeople or charity workers” might work better, though “This means you” is a nice touch.
Idea! Maybe I should invent this. Mount a camera, have a computer take a head shot of anyone who comes up the walk when you’re with a client and display it on a bright flat screen with “Wanted For Unlawful Solicitation” over it.
Brilliant idea Don!
A bit heavy artillery for the use, but the comic value might be worth the technology.
Yup, I’d replace the ‘No Soliciting’ sign with a ‘By Prior Appointment Only’ sign. Although, they might not know the meaning of prior…
Interesting how well the White Dragon and his boneyard work as an anti-religious-solicitors sign. Maybe if I had a couple of human skulls out there it would also work on salespeople. I know someplace where I could get life sized plastic human skulls.
Hmmmm.