To ask you...no, to BEG you...

[Yesitsbess]

Put your house numbers on your house people!

I lost my hospitality job during the lockdown and, as many people have had to, took up a delivery job to make ends meet. I have learned that delivery drivers are grumpy for a reason! Those reasons are numerous.

If you want to help us out for reasons that include: our safety, our being able to park safely, our being able to make the insane time targets we are set by our companies, our not wasting fuel looking for you (both environmentally and efficiency-wise) and you just getting your food/parcels/taxis on-time then please have a look at the following:

1. God tier - people with GIANT NUMBERS IN LIGHTS on their houses AND BINS ( we love you, especially if we deliver after dark) even if we're not delivering to your house, we use you as navigation because Googlemaps is shite.

1. Mid-tier - people who live somewhere hard-to-find but include directions on their order. Your street has 'odds and evens'. You have your number on your door in a colour that is discernible in the dark.

1. Poo-tier - people who live on a New build estate where the developer assigned house numbers by THROWING A CALCULATOR AT A CEILING FAN, and yet they think Google maps will see us right. It will not and we hate you.

1. Hell Tier - people who live on a main road, with long drives spanning off said main road, with NO indication of what house number/name they are at he end of their drive...

1. Seventh circle of Hell tier - you live very rurally and don't provide directions. Or in a very difficult to access place, or you have insane building works on the path, your dog is horrible (please stop your dogs humping and/or biting us - we're on minimum wage, we don't care if he "never does this usually!")

Anyway, if you've read this and think "We're golden!" on this issue, drive around your neighbouring roads at night and try to pick a random number to find - it's a fun game and might help you see what we see?

PUT NUMBERS ON YOUR HOUSES PEOPLE!

@myotherusernameisonholiday Hurrah for you and your bins! I am honoured .

And as it happens I am working tonight, thought I wasn't. So am going to try this what3words business and if it works, demand my company make it mandatory when ordering.

@QueenPaw Your old road has given me hives just reading about it.

I hear you and gained a fresh respect for delivery drivers when at the last election I delivered personally addresses leaflets for a particular political party. There were whole streets cut in half by others and bisected with solid garden walls, and bungalows (they were the worst) with entrances in one street and the number and address in a parallel one. And I had the benefit of the party's office ordering the envelopes sensibly.
Our delivery drivers are fab. They put up with a pointlessly woofing dog and a rural location.
Tho we do have a BIG house name sign. Honest.

Ahh, this all looks funny, will have to read later.
It reminded me of the Michael McIntyre stand-up where he's talking about moving to the country. Neighbours saying "Oh, ignore the sat-nav because that takes you to another house."
Suggestion: "Why not go to that other house and ask them to swap postcodes, then you'll both be sorted?"
And his description of giving directions on the phone to someone, hopefully not the police as it would be futile: "You'll feel a slight dip in the road. You won't see it, you'll just feel it, then a sharp right as if you're going into the hedge..." He suggests passing the phone to the burglar and saying "So tell them how you found us, then!"

I am at work and have almost immediately encountered a what3words problem. Doesn't recognise newbuilds.

Or any house with a name. So what3words only works if you supply the words. Harrumph.

@ormally

It is VERY funny. All of it.

@Yesitsbess

I am at work and have almost immediately encountered a what3words problem. Doesn't recognise newbuilds.

Eh? It covers the whole of the globe!

We're in a new build estate of only 2 streets and about 80 houses but it took forever for us to show up on any maps and the developers/council couldn't agree on who was to provide street signs so neither of them did it! But, there must have been a groupon deal or something because the whole estate seemed to buy these house numbers at the one time that also have the street name...hopefully that gets us at least to mid tier!

I think that with the what3 words, the other person gives you the 3 words, for their house, and then you put them in and the app finds it for you.

Embarrassingly, our address is an odd one. So,e delivery drivers end up at our rear. We have no rear access except a window which drops forward into the kitchen. Last delivery we had, the driver was so relieved to have finally found us, he leant on the kitchen window, tipping it forward, knocking two large glass vases over. Glass everywhere. Poor chap was distraught.

I’m a community midwife. I feel your pain. New estates are always a nightmare for numbers and parking! Then you have farms or houses in the middle of nowhere up a tiny track off a main road with no bloody instructions. Wasting an hour trying to find a house is soul destroying.

@Yesitsbess

I am at work and have almost immediately encountered a what3words problem. Doesn't recognise newbuilds.

What 3 words works with any single 3 meter square on earth. It is completely other to addresses.

Go to what3words.com and search ///tolls.wiring.weds as an example.

(I’m also guilty of living on a lane that changes name eg. ‘Village Lane’ becomes ‘Village Street’ becomes ‘Something cottages’ and then becomes ‘Village Lane’ again. The house numbers are almost pointless as there are actually three or four number ones! But I do at least leave instructions that we are the row of white cottages with a very distinctive front door!

What I'm saying is: if the what3words isn't supplied by the person ordering, I can't look the address up to get directions. I understand how it works but I've just put my bosses house name in and it can't find it

I would have to call every customer and ask them to download the app to give me the words.

I hope that makes sense.

I would have to call every customer and ask them to download the app to give me the words.

Yes, they'd need to give you the info from the app or website. It may be worth asking whether customers have their what 3 words address when people order, though - some will have it, especially those who know their address is hard to find; and others may think about finding it out for the future.

You'd hate us. Not only do we not have a house number or road name, but our lane is on the opposite side of an A road to all the other houses in our village so most people don't realise we're there. And worst of all, on the corner we have X Farm, then there's X Lodge, X Cottage, X House (us) then 3 or 4 houses with other random names before you get to X Villa. Whoever was responsible for naming all these houses had a serious lack of imagination! We have the house name on both sides of the drive, I emphasise HOUSE on delivery instructions, and give a description of the house but we still get lots of stuff misdelivered. If I'm expecting anyone after dark I leave the lights on at the end of the drive, by the front door and in the porch as there are no streetlights so it is really difficult to find. I love living in the country but this aspect is a bit of a nuisance.

It is bloody annoying. I was half an hour late at a patients house recently because it was unsigned and very difficult to find (via an unmarked gap in a hawthorn hedge!).
When I eventually arrived the family said that the NHS needed to invest in map reading training as all other staff had struggled to find them as well.
Yeah, funny that.

I could put a house number on my named property on a rural road with about a dozen other properties dotted along a 3 mile stretch, but (a) it would be a made up house number and (b) it would be of absolutely no reference value since the other houses scattered along our road do not have numbers

Yanbu. Me and my husband where just saying this yesterday

IT'S BIN DAY! WOOOOOOOO!

Loving your work number nineteen!

@AxCap those are God tier my friend. God tier, especially if they light up by motion sensor.

Great idea to do What3Words directions, hadn't thought of that.

We live rurally on a road where most houses, including ours, have names. Reason being that every time a developer gets hold of a bit of land they plonk at least three houses on it and label them 1, 2, 3. Consequently at one point there were no fewer than twelve "3 Somewhere Road"s on our road. Posty begged people to name them!

When we ordered a new house sign, my key criteria was that it must be in a font style and size clearly visible from the road.

We always put lights on when expecting a takeaway and used to give what we thought were really clear directions "opposite this specific building." Amazing how many delivery drivers thought "opposite" = "on the same side of the road a couple of doors down." Less of a problem now the building has been knocked down and replaced with (yep!) three new builds. We direct by telling them to look for a layby now...seems to work.

@Yesitsbess god tier 🙌🏻 closest I've ever been to that is wee Nicola's never-ending tier 4 I think! And yes, most of the houses including ours have soffit lights so the plaque should be well lit in the dark so we'll take the bonus points too!