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!

All it would take would be an extra field on an order form asking for the What3Words for the location that could be printed out on the address label of whomever is ordering the items.

In Ireland we have Eircodes which are unique to every property in Ireland. So in Dublin for example we've had area codes for donkey's years but now we also have Eircodes and they are mapped to specific homes/flats/apartments and the difference between the area code and Eircode is an additional 4 characters but combined with the area code it works. We could also use What3Words too but so far the Eircode at the end of our address seems to work. When the Eircodes were being rolled out, it was advised to have them on a post-it near the landline phone (quaint). Now most people would know their Eircode but it's taken years. I wouldn't know my neighbours Eircode so I'd have to look that up (and that's possible too using the Eircode finder).

My favourite type of property to "find" when at work (usually in the dark) is the classic "Rose Cottage" other flowers are available , however the property is most definitely not a cottage! Usually a large 4/5 bed detached....
There may be a house name on the house , which of course isn't hear the gateway .

These are usually in the villages where numbers and often street names don't exist. So Rose Cottage , Namedtown , Whichevercounty .

I hate to be the spectre at the feast, but there is one problem with what3words. It is a privately-owned company. If it goes bust, or their server gets flooded, or any one of half-a-dozen other possible disasters, and we are all relying on it, we are all going to be up sh1t creek without a paddle.

My house doesn’t have a number 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Nubbled

My house doesn’t have a number 🤷🏻‍♀️

So OP..... I am through no fault of my own- in Hell tier. However- I loved your OP so much I even googled to find this, failed miserably- but @LurkerDad, had it nailed.

John Lewis driver pulls up outside and just starts unloading- this has NEVER happened before. Amazon and post office know us- any other random delivery forget it. I asked the John Lewis man- how he found us. Delm8 was what he said. He told me it was made by an ex-delivery driver and said it was amazing. So I googled it to see if I could find it for you, but couldn’t remember the name of it ( knew it wasn’t W3W or waze)

As soon as I saw LurkerDad’s post- I thought YES! That was it!

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime.

Yes I have thought that quite a lot. That's why I like proper directions, but have bowed to those who think it's amazing.

Still prefer a giant gnome in the garden and a fuck off sized house number myself.

@lifecouldbeadream it does sound superb! And I 100% get it, but paying £40 for something that allows you to do your job when you earn minimum wage is a big bite if that makes sense. I don't know why the cost should be on me. That's not meant unkindly. That's an entire 5 hour shift just to pay for software so I can do my job.

@Gotthetshirt23 I hear you. Those addresses give me the heebie jeebies before I leave the store!

@SchadenfreudePersonified lights torches

I do get it. Perhaps your bosses would pay if it was quicker/more efficient for them? More deliveries= more money? Or if paid per delivery, more efficient for you. It sucks- it really does.

I'm amazed that so many of you have bins. We just empty the inside bins into a bin bag the night before bin day and leave it inside the back door. It gets put out for collection in the morning so that the seagulls don't rip it open during the night.

@MrsSteveMcDonald what do you do with the recycling?

Our council actually just replaced all of our black bins with smaller ones so now I need to get new numbers for that one, this thread is a good reminder

I used to work on a small industrial estate that had been extended at some point. Due to unknown reasons this somehow resulted in it having two number 7s and a 7A..... This did not cause delivery problems at all (ahem).

@MrsSteveMcDonald

I'm amazed that so many of you have bins. We just empty the inside bins into a bin bag the night before bin day and leave it inside the back door. It gets put out for collection in the morning so that the seagulls don't rip it open during the night.

The bin men round here only collect rubbish in bins, which they can clamp against the back of their lorry to be lifted up and inverted into the bowels of the machine by a mechanical hoist. Bags and boxes with rubbish in them get left by the road.

Our bin men just collect bags so not having them in bins makes it easier for them.

The recycling is in different, resuable bags or boxes depending on what it is.

The reason we were given when we had to pay for bins that were compatible with the bin-lorries was that rubbish-sacks were constantly broken open by scavengers (foxes and rats, mostly) and their contents strewed across the road.

Along with the introduction of the smaller black bins we also got food waste bins, they have a handle which locks them shut to stop foxes getting in which I thought was quite clever. We didn’t have to pay for the bins though I’ve just got a council tax statement saying it’s going up 5% so I guess we did really!

Ooo @PattyPan I think you live where I live! We recycle everything and have very little food waste but I am struggling with the small black bin a bit.

I'm just about to start 4 weeks work on the census.

I live really rurally, though delivery drivers don't seem to have a problem. It helps that our house has been here 400 years and is marked on ordnance survey maps!

However, I'm really hoping I get a relatively urban area allocated because I've done it before and I share the stress of looking for a random cottage in a postcode which stretches for a mile...

Though my parents live in at the top of a village cul de sac. They are number 18 and next door is 16. However they started numberering from the bottom, and odd numbers the other side of the road so their other neighbours are no 7. It's very random.

After reading this thread, I've just ordered reflective house numbers to fix to the fence at the bottom of my drive
These look brilliant!

ebay.co.uk/usr/owlzeyez

I am still here and reading. Quick catch up though. Will respond tomorrow.

Just on here to say you write beautifully. Maybe something to explore on the side...

@Dilemma8188 that is such a lovely thing to say. Thankyou.

I did make a pitch to a magazine in a moment of wine-induced bravado during lockdown and whilst I didn't get the gig, they've asked me to write a tiny feature for them (slightly less sweary than this thread) and I'm hoping to be published in a couple of months. Still love delivering food though, I'm like Santa but with dinner

im number 1 so you love me

but my pet peeve with delivery drivers is not leaving my parcels in my recycling bin when I request this and leaving it downstairs in a neighbours garden I hate!