Man sprawled on front step. WWYD?

[Lizzie523]

I live in a flat and when the takeaway man came over an hour ago he said a man was banging on the front door and vomiting everywhere ()

Looking out I can see the man is still sitting sprawled across our front step. I moved in 4 months ago and have met all neighbours apart from one, a man. So it could well be him. He hasn't buzzed any of the other flats and he's just sitting there. It will get dark soon. I don't know for sure he lives here but seems probable.

WWYD? I don't want to deal with it at all but feel some sympathy

To be fair @RoseRedRoseBlue I only read a few posts, my concentration after 3 glasses of fizzy ain't what it used to be 😂

Daphne it sounds well deserved 🙂

@RoseRedRoseBlue

Daphne it sounds well deserved 🙂

Haha yeah last day of term here today so it's been busy busy busy. Dd is noisily enjoying a 'virtual sleepover" with her friends, Dh has flaked out on the sofa asleep and I'm tidying away the remains of the wine we took the leavers BBQ 😂

I hope you’ve got disinfectant to throw outside with hot water in the morning. You did the right thing. Don’t ever put yourself at risk

@AlGorithim

I never understand these threads.

‘There’s a man unconscious on my doorstep, what shall I do? I know! I’ll post on mumsnet.’

What kind of decision-avoidant attention-seeking flake do you need to be to actually have to ask on an Internet forum what to do in this situation? I mean WTF, because you’re clearly running between your window to check on his state and your laptop to update MN. I actually despair at people.

A lot of people post on their phones. It's perfectly reasonable that OP could have been hovering by the window/door, firing off replies while she internally debated what to do...

Some people can fall into second-guessing spirals where they feel frozen by indecision and the fear that they're doing the wrong thing. Not ideal, and something that will hopefully go away with experience, but absolutely not something worth calling a stranger a "decision-avoidant attention-seeking flake" over...

We all approach stressful situations differently.

Need diagram

You did the right thing calling the police @Lizzie523. If you see anything like that again then call the police or ambulance.

You never know what people are going to act like, especially when drunk, so best not to get personally involved. x

Have an ok night and enjoy your weekend. xxx

did he get darked on?

I most likely wouldn't have gone out but would have shouted through the door asking if they were ok.

This happened to me, late one night. I had a CCTV (pre-Ring doorbells etc.) as I was in the top flat and no way to see who was outside.

Saw someone sitting on the steps, he kept getting up to go to the gutter and vomit, the sat down again. Eventually he moved a few yards down the road and crouched on the pavement, still carefully vomiting in the gutter.

I had visions of him being there all night/being mugged so called the Police. They came and asked him some questions and called him a taxi. He was decent enough not to vomit on my steps but I still wasn't going outside to check on him late at night in the dark.

Tbf, so what if he was drunk or on drugs? Plenty of naice 'normal' people get too drunk once in a while, and some may even do drugs. Shit happens, and shit goes wrong. Doesn't mean people don't need help even if it is self inflicted.

Btw, before I get jumped on, I'm not saying OP should have gone down to help him herself if she didn't feel safe, but calling the police earlier on would have been way better.

Some people have been really mean to the op. She is a young woman on her own unsure what to do. Nothing wrong with posting on here for advice. Doesn't make her stupid or a snowflake!

Not RTFT

If you can see him then you shout out the window. Obv.

God, everyone is getting quite oddly het up about this!

I like to help catastrophically drunk people if I can, given that I have been in that state alone in public one or two times myself after traumatic life incidents, and have enormously appreciated the kindness of strangers. (I’ll never forget a lady I met when I got horrifically trashed in public very soon after being seriously sexually assaulted. She didn’t speak any English but could see I was utterly distressed and wanted to be kind, so she offered me a fag. I lot it from the wrong end and had to throw it away. She lit the next one for me and gave it to me. It’s a tiny thing, but at that time her kindness made me cry). So have a number of my loved ones, for different reasons…. It’s always nice to be nice (and sometimes it saves lives).

So I would probably have gone down and offered him a drink of water and to call him a cab….. But I should add a rider to that, that many of my loved ones think I am too ready to involve myself (sometimes riskily) in matters that don’t concern me. I have countless text exchanges with my boyfriend where I say “So and so is doing such and such in the street - I need to go and intervene” and he responds “Don’t do it babe - it’s nothing to do with you.”

(Almost always I DO do it, babe! I’m interfering - it’s in my nature!)

All that said, we don’t know what OP’s area is like - maybe she just isn’t comfortable going out alone there after dark. (If so I feel awful for her, and for everybody else living in similar conditions). Or maybe she has reasons to find drunk people, or men in general, or insert anything you like here, intimidating? Her personal history and current circumstances are her own business. She felt too scared to go out, for whatever reason….. And that is that.

Importantly, nobody has done anything unforgivable here. The man has just got pissed and sat down on a step to vomit and vape - it may not be the classiest act in the world, but it doesn’t make him the devil or a knife-wielding maniac. And OP has been nervous and unsure what to do - again, this isn’t her fault and she has done nothing wrong……

🤷‍♀️

@DaphneDeloresMoorhead

Sure do that if you want the police to show up in four weeks time. Great. Other than that 999 Clearly you don't realise that 101 and 999 calls are dealt with in the same room, by the same call handlers, the same dispatchers and the same officers, using the same risk assessment model.

The only difference between 101 and 999 is that there is no delay to get through on 999. A call handler in my force may spend 1800-2200 taking 101 calls then when the demand rises on 999 their skillset is changed on their computer to take 999 calls instead. Still the same call handler at the same desk .

I didn't know that. Useful knowledge, thanks.

It's really helpful to think about it in those terms - same people, same potential help coming your way, just one line gets picked up straight away and one doesn't. It puts the decision-making process back onto 'is there an immediate danger?'

@ThickAndTired

This happened to me, late one night. I had a CCTV (pre-Ring doorbells etc.) as I was in the top flat and no way to see who was outside.

Saw someone sitting on the steps, he kept getting up to go to the gutter and vomit, the sat down again. Eventually he moved a few yards down the road and crouched on the pavement, still carefully vomiting in the gutter.

I had visions of him being there all night/being mugged so called the Police. They came and asked him some questions and called him a taxi. He was decent enough not to vomit on my steps but I still wasn't going outside to check on him late at night in the dark.

This.

To the OP, if it happens again, it may not be safe enough for you to go out and check on the person. But it might also not be safe for the person there to be on their own either. That's what the police are for.

I would of personally dealt with this at the time when the takeaway guy told OP.
It was relatively early in the evening and I would of took a look at him myself then made a decision to just either let him sit there or call a ambulance if he looked unwell.
I wouldn’t consider inviting him in to my home under any circumstances.

I think people really underestimate how different stuff is when there is someone there to just talk it over. It is so different being alone and being undecided. Am I wasting police time, should I go out, but surely someone else is around, literally what should I do.

I posted on here for a handhold a couple of years ago as a very shouty angry seemingly drunk man had managed to climb through a neighbours window and they had kicked him out into the shared corridor. He was smashing into my and my neighbours door and yelling. I was on the phone to 999 waiting for help and I posted just to know I wasn't alone really, I was terrified and needed just to reach someone. It took over 20 mins to actually tell someone the situation, 999 hung up twice and put me on hold. I was also told off for posting, a couple of people asked why I was posting like this was a non-issue. I was terrified and shaking, different situation to the OP but similar replies. My neighbour still keeps the window open all night, ground floor next to an area clubbers tend to congregate and get rowdy so I just hope it doesn't happen again! But if it does I'm sure I'll be posting again. Sometimes you just need someone.

What's the likelihood realistically speaking that a) he's a lovely fella and is having some sort of unexpected illness b) he's a disgusting drunk.

Or a combination of A and B. Why drunk is prefixed with disgusting I'm not sure.

@Bluesheep8

What's the likelihood realistically speaking that a) he's a lovely fella and is having some sort of unexpected illness b) he's a disgusting drunk.

Or a combination of A and B. Why drunk is prefixed with disgusting I'm not sure.

Because someone so off their face they're vomiting on my doorstep doesn't exactly make me want to be their mate tbf.

@Bluesheep8

What's the likelihood realistically speaking that a) he's a lovely fella and is having some sort of unexpected illness b) he's a disgusting drunk.

Or a combination of A and B. Why drunk is prefixed with disgusting I'm not sure.

Laying on the floor outside OP’s flat, shouting and vomiting.

Would people really phone the police or go and help for every single pissed person in the street? If I'd done that where I used to live I'd never had been off the phone. I'd have phoned if they were collapsed unconscious and/or bleeding but just sitting behaving weirdly, no chance.

I was wondering why being drunk made him disgusting, too. If he gets himself into this state all the time he has got a serious illness (some form of alcoholism) and I feel very sorry for him.

If it’s an occasional thing for him it may well have been as a response to a traumatic or upsetting life event - often the case when people get themselves that buckled, especially if drinking alone. So again I feel sorry for him.

If he was just recreationally drinking and took it too far then again I feel (a bit) sorry for him - he clearly didn’t have a great night to end up sitting on his own like that, and he’s going to feel bloody awful this morning.

I’m not saying any of this to denigrate the OP or her actions - she was too scared to go out to him and she had her reasons and that’s perfectly fine and understandable. But some of the statements about the drunk man here (not from all posters, but from a few) do seem very judgemental. We have no evidence that the drunk man did anything wrong - he didn’t commit violence or vandalism or anything in the OP’s account. He just sat and was sick and vaped, then wandered off. None of them moral crimes.

Drunk man, should you happen to be a Mumsnetter and come across this thread, could you please update and reassure us that you are ok now?