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!

Deliveroo man knocked my door at 10 am this morning with food.

No idea why he picked my house or how many houses he'd tried.

The order had a street name (only 20 houses....) but no number.

No phone number.

Just a first name and initial.

What circle of he'll is that @Yesitsbess.

I was good and didn't pretend it was mine even tonight I wanted to

We are hellishly rural, sat nav doesn't get you here or even near here, I always put enormously detailed instructions, a google maps pin, a phone number AND a What3Words address... Still end up pissing off delivery drivers! (Sorry!)

I live on a long road and several houses have the same bloody number followed by a letter. For example 8, 8a, 8b etc. They are stretched out over half a mile and the sat nav tales people to number 8 only.

We have found the solution for evening takeaway deliveries - we pull our wheelie bin out and put it in front of our drive. Then we say yes we are 8F drive to number 8 - look along the mane and you will see our bin as a marker.

YANBU OP especially about new estates. I used to deliver addressed leaflets and one particular estate was appalling. All flats which would normally have simultaneous numbers in blocks... but not this estate.. oh no...

Odd and even numbers were in different blocks and said blocks appeared to be randomly dotted about the estate. On top ofcthat the numbers did not follow any discernable order inside the building.. one corridor i remember had numbers 18, 24, 32 and 36 ( try as I might I never did track down 20 and 22!!)

@ghostyslovesheets

Oh I was about to say YABU but then I remembered the third circle of hell - walks - any place named **walk - fuck me I got lost on the estate I used to work on so many times - looking for 298 fuck me walk? - well park three miles away and - oh look there is 200 fuck me walk ...296, 297 - this must be 298 - NO it's actually number 56 Fuck me again walk - arggh

Oh my goodness, yes. When I first started my job a colleague told me in the address had the word Walk in it, to get out the car and do that. It is exactly how you describe.

YADNBU.

Have been delivering Mother's Day flowers today. One order just had the street name, no number - I got a really twatty response when I had the gall to ring the online orderer and ask exactly which of the 82 houses their mum lived at.

'Well it's on x street'

'Yes. But which house number?

'My mums house!'

Give me fucking strength.

I'm a delivery drivers dream!
New build house, first house to be occupied and put giant number up on our first day.

I even give a neighbouring post code and comprehensive directions on orders where I can especially my local Chinese takeaway

I know it won't help deliveroo or Amazon type delivery drivers, but I don't undersatnd why, when you ring for an ambulance and you are in a "seconds count" type emergency, the call handlers don't - as a matter of routine - suggest that, if there is anyone available can they go out on to the street and wave the ambulance down.
I've always done this when I've know there is an ambulance coming (mainly to a sports field - I don't call them to my home on a regular basis ). It is part of the training we deliver about writing Care Plans, that someone should always get themselves outside to flag down the ambulance and get them to the patient as quickly as possible. I can't understand why it isn't commonly tried for all 999 calls. I realise not everyone will have a person available, but there often will be.

We had to submit a correction to Google maps because it had our street incorrectly extending across a junction, so drivers kept stopping at our number Wrong Street then calling us in a panic. How the occupants of Wrong Street put up with not even existing for do long, I have no idea.

We are tucked away in what looks like a long hedge and my driveway just appears as a gap in the hedge. My drive is curved so you cannot see my house from the road either, but I do have dusk to dawn lights and a sign that has my house number and road name to make it very clear which house you have come to if you venture up the drive.

However, if I have a delivery coming, I always put a direction on it so that they can find my house, also my phone number so they can ring me when they realise they have driven past. I cannot put a house number on the hedge though. Bins get nicked so I cannot put a bin out with my house number on but I do try to make it easy to find me.

We could do with the system in the US where they paint their house number of the kerb.

I really try with mine. Gurt big white numbers on all my bins, right by the gate. I also put in the directions that entrance is the gate BY THE BINS and NOT THE DOOR AT THE BACK OF THE HOUSE (my house is weird and the 'front' door is only accessible by parking up and walking past the back gate all the way round the pedestrian path to the 'front'. This is madness to do with a parcel hence the directions)
So so many delivery drivers ignore this and then either get confused and can't find the house on their way round, complain there's no lights over the door or query why that door is tricky to open or I can't immediately find the key. I don't use that door. Because it's much easier just to use the gate entrance that's nearest the car park and is well lit and where I've given directions to!

Help me make it even more god tier @Yesitsbess I honestly don't know what else I can do!

I don’t do your job and I AGREE WITH THIS WHOLEHEARTEDLY

@EggyPegg

I raise you a rural village with no street names and all the houses have names, not numbers. As in The Barn Little Whingeing Wiltshire

I had to deliver some home learning equipment to some our out pupils at the start of January's lockdown. I chanced upon one house and got directions to the second and spent an hour looking for the third. Eventually someone told me that it was down a track, behind the church.

Not even a hint as to it being there.

Yep, my parents live in one of those.

Mum and dad
House name
Village
Larger village 5 miles away

They live down a track 300m off the main road. They have their house name on a sign at the main road but I do feel for delivery drivers, it's miles away from pretty much anywhere. Any driver trying to find them for the 1st time, good luck.

There's an estate near me that you can't even find the street, let alone the fucking house number. Plus it's 50/50 whether you're viewing back door or front door of the house so you're not sure if that house is on the street or the other side. I have "geographical dyslexia" - (not an actual term, but I read it online once and thought, fuck that's me).

I've just dug out someone's directions they sent me last time I had to go to this estate - It was a voice note:

"Come up ABC, turn right past Z. Second left and then you can either go right or left. Right goes to X and left goes on to my street, so you can carry on and take another right, and then on the left is the back of my house."

WTF. And I didn't know what ABC was as there were two entrances to the estate so I was at an extreme disadvantage before I started. I also didn't know Z. I don't know why the street is not a good place to stop as opposed to drive to the back of someone's house. The whole place makes me weep., I need a glass of wine just thinking about the times I've been.

Frankies, I feel a lot like that except I'm dropping off food rather than trying to save a family member, I do feel your pain though (reverse sarcasm? Not even sure anymore).

I lived on a farm in the arse end of nowhere and it never (to my shame) occurred to me that people delivering after dark might be freaked out!

This reminds me of the Agatha Christie book, The Clocks. The very confusing numbering of a crescent was an important plot device!

I live rural, we have no number but we have the front light on and solar lit candy canes on the fence, put up 3 christmases ago lol
my instructions are usually -2nd house back from the petrol station (stand alone one, cant miss it), with the candy canes on the white fence

JakcieWeaver - RIGHT? When you're sailing down a 50mph and the drive was 800m ago and you have another 14 miles to go before you can turn round?!?

And all the time the sat nav is telling you to "turn around if possible"

I am cognisant of what I have started. I am also a bit sleepy? And I will be back and answer you all tomorrow.

Nap.

Ah this can be so stupid. My old house was number 10. There was 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 there. But numbers 1-7 were in the village and 10-14 were the other side of a dual carriage way and not in the village at all. (number 8 & 9 were presumably knocked down to make the road) And despite giving directions, as there was no actual sign pointing to the turn off and it really wasn't visible until you were going past it - most delivery people simply couldn't find it at all.

I thought I'd solved those issues when I moved but now I live in number 6. On one side of me is number 11 and on the other is number 2... Its not even a new build estate. No idea who came up with the numbers though ( there is no number 8 at all).
Thankfully we all have it painted on our bins in a huge bright number!

oooh, what3words might be the answer, live at the end of a very long street which wraps around a park, 3 sides of a square are the same street and a random offshoot which is also the same street, always get a call from delivery drivers as maps pinpoint us elsewhere.

I recently typed up flat numbers and house number/street name on a little label maker to put up next to all the door buzzers on our house to make things easier for deliveries.

Polishes halo.

Is this thread a stealth advert for what3words! Had never heard of it, but it looks amazing. Are the words always in English?

What do people do when they don’t have house numbers though and only names? I always write down some form of instruction but in the dark it’s still hard to see our house and impossible to see the name on the wall!

Helpful post makes mental note to get outside light fixed. On a similar thread another courier explained their tight deadlines so I know fly down the stairs so I don’t hold them up. Not going to work for the elderly though I guess :-)

Due to lockdown tearing up we do know have numbers at the gate - pats back