Postman smashing on door and shouting

[OttilieStonelady]

I live in a house with other people. Someone else had something sent to them by a family member so neither of us knew it was arriving. He's not in. Postman came to door to drop off. Saw me upstairs and I swear was banging on my door for 5 minutes so hard it sounded like he was going to break in. Rang the door over and over and over banging in-between. He disappeared, I guess delivered neighbours post then came back and banged on my door again, then next again, then back to me again. He even shouted 'i can see you'. I can't leave when I'm in the middle of presenting to people, especially not senior management, presenting extremely sensitive data. It's not a big house so he would've known I'd have heard him. WIBU not to open the door? Was he BU to keep banging aggressively on my door? All round a weird experience.

@Emilyontmoor

stoppo I think this is were my sign would have been evidence of my chip on my shoulder

There corrected it for you.

Hilarious. Take a look in the mirror.

@MajorCarolDanvers my WFH friends are having a ball in the loungewear getting their pedicures whilst ‘working’ . A police officer I know had to get the lady doing her nails to hide under the table when her boss FaceTimed her. My other friend always offers me a brew/food if I deliver her post, sadly don’t have time to stop. She says how much more she gets done without constant interruptions from people in the office and could finish a couple of hours early.
Like I said, WFH is new to me, saw my first sign about 2 weeks ago.

@outofservice

my WFH friends are having a ball in the loungewear getting their pedicures whilst ‘working’ . A police officer I know had to get the lady doing her nails to hide under the table when her boss FaceTimed her.

The only thing this is evidence of is that your friends are dicks taking the mickey out of their employers and tbh (if it's true, which I'm on the fence about) in the case of your police officer friend, taking the mickey out of the public too if she isn't doing her job during her allocated working hours.

Maybe get some friends who are more decent people? Your bar sounds astonishingly low for someone who thinks it's incredibly rude for people not to answer the door if they're otherwise engaged.

Many of us are working from home, not 'working' from home. No need for the quotation marks for many of us.

@outofservice

You say my WFH friends are having a ball in the loungewear getting their pedicures whilst ‘working’ . A police officer I know had to get the lady doing her nails to hide under the table when her boss FaceTimed her. My other friend always offers me a brew/food if I deliver her post, sadly don’t have time to stop. She says how much more she gets done without constant interruptions from people in the office and could finish a couple of hours early. I said, WFH is new to me, saw my first sign about 2 weeks ago

Interesting. My wfh friends (which is almost everyone know) are running businesses, charities, finance, admin, public affairs, fundraising, are NHS dieticians, counsellors, solicitors, sales, marketing - all walks of life actually.

They are working long hard hours, with no work life balance. Struggling with well-being. Getting over the horrors of home schooling.

I don't have time to get pedicures. I'm too busy trying to keep my organisation afloat so as not have to make even more people redundant. Supporting staff who are wfh are struggling with loneliness and isolation.

Meanwhile my DH is in another room running public affairs for another organisation, doing media and meetings with civil servants and government ministers. He's not having pedicures either.

If you really haven't noticed wfh except in the last 2 weeks then you are phenomenally unobservant.

Then they can take it down if they are in and able to open the door, can't they?

@VanGoghsDog, only if they know the note is there. Obviously they won't know unless they go out, or unless OP flogs round all of them asking if putting the sign up is OK. Which is utterly ridiculous when there is a perfectly satisfactory well-known process for postmen to use when they can't deliver a parcel.

Outofservice It would clearly come as a surprise to you then that employers are actually finding that working from home is actually good for business. We are not just 18 months into a pandemic that forced those who could to work from home. We are now at the point where more employers, those who had not done so already in the thirty years since the internet made it more effective, have had a chance to work out and compare the economics and other benefits (like making it easier for, mainly women, to juggle childcare like I did 29 years ago) of home working and put processes in place to make sure people are not swinging the lead. Things like following up when a customer complains that a customer service representative was clearly mid sex when she took their call or calling in from Portugal when they took the annual leave anyway that they had been refused (actual examples, both lost their jobs). Of course some people will try it on but they probably would have done at work too, all those toilet cubicles that would be engaged for hours at a time….)

They have found the quality and quantity of work improves and they don’t have to pay expensive rents for office space for everyone. Why do you think the government are so keen to get everyone back in the office as their big property developer friends panic at falling rents. I know at least six big employers giving up office space in cities.

And some people actually enjoy their jobs and want to do the best they can. Like when I was juggling breastfeeding a baby, tending to a toddler with chicken pox and getting on with what I wanted to get done via phoning in to the intranet to contact customers (obviously not by yelling at them, however stressed and frustrated I was)

It isn’t just that home working has been around three decades, it has grown exponentially in the last 18 months and will continue to be a normal part of life into the future. So perhaps instead of all the inverse snobbery you just accept it as normal.

The irony is that before all this most people were actually not at home, and since quite a few people are more able to answer the door, the Postman has fewer items that they have to take back to the DO.

Leave a note on the door in future stating you are WFH and a safe place for parcels to be left. I am surprised the postie gave you this much time tbh, but you have to expect that the door might knock at some point and warn uninvited/unexpected visitors that you are not going to answer the door whilst working.

@2Two

Then they can take it down if they are in and able to open the door, can't they?

@VanGoghsDog, only if they know the note is there. Obviously they won't know unless they go out, or unless OP flogs round all of them asking if putting the sign up is OK. Which is utterly ridiculous when there is a perfectly satisfactory well-known process for postmen to use when they can't deliver a parcel.

The op wouldn't put the note there unless she was the only person in the house. Obviously.

Yes, if the door isn't answered the postie should just follow the process, not hang around banging and shouting.

I have had similar twice op - not from our usual postie but from Amazon / Hermes… we have a doorbell which was ignored and they pounded really loudly and aggressively a few times. I have been wfh (charity) since covid started, I am on the phone, all day, back to back appointments, with vulnerable people in distress, which is my job, I take it seriously and I work hard, so no I do not interrupt the phone call to go and answer the door and I consider the banging very rude. And at that moment in time yes my job is more important than the parcel delivery. I would think it similarly very unprofessional if someone got up in the middle of presenting to answer the door!!! Everyone working from home is not on a jolly- they are doing their jobs. Including social care, health, council services etc. My presentations are to NHS commissioners. My phone calls are to patients and NHS colleagues. And I am astonished that people would not realise that people from all professions - including Gp’s, politicians etc have been working from home since covid!! What do you think all these people did during actual lockdown?!
On a lighter note I may try the note on my door, potentially with a large arrow to the doorbell….

I would then also, after sitting in that scenario, tell my team via an email update to manage these situations by for example placing a do not disturb note on the door (which, I'm sorry, should be an obvious thing to do if you are 'genuinely' doing a presentation to senior management that can't be interrupted

It shouldn't be incumbent on the householder to have to put up a sign telling other adults not to beat down their doors (fire or fleeing an angry bear notwithstanding). The obvious thing to do is, as a delivery person, ring or knock normally once, wait a few moments, ring or knock normally again, then if no reply, put a 'sorry I missed you' card through the door.

At any rate, as I and others have already said, the kind of person who will bash at your door is not the kind of person who will take notice of any notes that you put up. Time and time again, the only people who tend to take the time to read notes stating what should be obvious but apparently isn't are the respectful ones with at least half a brain to whom it already is obvious and who thus didn't need the note to guide their use of common sense in the first place.

Even if the people they're aimed at do bother to read them, if they are self-important enough that they will gladly beat on your door for several minutes, they likely also believe that such a note is for other, lesser delivery people and certainly not for somebody as amazing as them.

What does a police officer do working from home?

I was away for several weeks last year when my dad died, and I knew I had parcels due to arrive. So I put a note on the door that said "I am not home, please leave parcels at number 4" (which 4 were happy with).

Two days later I got a photo saying a parcel had been delivered, with a photo of it on the doorstep. So I got a friend to go round and collect that one. He said there was no note. Assuming it had dropped off he put a new one up.
When I got home I found the original note shoved through the letterbox and the following scribbled on it "no-one in at 4, have left on doorstep".

I mean......you couldn't make it up. That was not the only parcel I was expecting! 🤦🏻‍♀️

@LetHimHaveIt

'I don't think that's very professional at all!

An informal meeting with friendly colleagues, maybe. Consultation with doctor or lawyer, social services, police, parent/teacher meeting on a time limit - no way! Again people have no idea what jobs people do from home. There was no excuse for the postie to behave like that and I'd be complaining to the depot.

We had similar when my DS was home sick and I told him not to open door while I went to shop and he said postie was aggressive, saying I can see you and kicked the door shock as if anyone would open it after that!'

Cool.

Don't quite understand why you had to tell your husband not to open the door when you went out. He's presumably not eight.

She didn't tell. She said DS not DH, she was talking about her son.

*meant to say she didn't.

@steff13

What does a police officer do working from home?

Are you referring to me? I'm not a police officer?

No, outofservice said she knows a police officer who's working from home.

Fair enough. Missed that. Still don't think it's grossly unprofessional.

@outofservice

So your job is more important than the postie trying to do theirs??

Ridiculous comment it’s not about level of importance it’s about appropriate behaviour.

I would complain to the Post Office. On every level this is inappropriate behaviour. People want their post and would generally go to the door regardless of whose post in house it might be. So it’s obvious there’s a reason you can’t get to the door. Massively invasive and actually I would be frightened to go to the door with this behaviour. Absolutely no excuse. Did the postie apologise when you explained delay?

The op wouldn't put the note there unless she was the only person in the house. Obviously.

But if she's busy working, how does she keep tabs on the comings and goings of her housemates?

@2Two

The op wouldn't put the note there unless she was the only person in the house. Obviously.

But if she's busy working, how does she keep tabs on the comings and goings of her housemates?

Look, it's not compulsory for her to put a note up. I have no idea how many people are in her house or how she would know.

It was just a fucking suggestion, it doesn't stand up to scientific analysis. It was a suggestion to the OP who seems to have accepted it without interminable nit picking, unlike you.

I also said that the postman should not have behaved like that, he should have taken the parcel away when she didn't answer.

majority not even working from home
My goodness, the arrogance you have. How on earth do you think you know that? I am paid to think, I might spend twice as long constructing a design in my mind as writing it up on the laptop. Often I reply to emails on my phone (again, I might take a beat to consider the advice). My friend works in a TV related activity, you might see her watching TV.

Then there's those who are breastfeeding, slow moving and struggle to get to the door (even if they look young and fit to you), getting dressed, going to toilet, shielding and had a bad experience with drivers getting too close, having a bad day where they just don't want to open the door etc etc etc.

Just do your job and leave others to get on with their lives without the excessive judgement.

@Stacey8989

I'm a postie and the amount of people that simply cannot be arsed to answer their door in general (majority not even working from home) and you can see them is really frustrating. (Especially when throwing it down with rain) You leave the parcel in a safe place then can hear them open their back door to get it...either that ignore you then coming chasomg after you down the street with their red form annoyed you haven't left it when they couldn't be arsed to answer the door (again not including people that work from home) it's rude and odd behaviour and happens more often tha not. We struggle with the increasing amount of parcels let alone people making it more difficult. Of course I understand some people simply cannot answer the door

Couldn't be arsed to open the door?

Maybe they weren't camped out behind it ready to open it at a moment's notice and you've moved on by the time they get to the door to answer it and then retrieve their parcel from the safe place or get the something for you card?!
That's happened to me on more than one occasion because I'm doing other things when the postie rocks up. Sometimes I'm even sleeping because I work nights and despite a sign on the door, they hammer on it anyway "Because I'm in".
It's not like I even know what day or time something is going to arrive, and certainly not if it's someone else's.

It's like you want to think everyone is going out of their way just to make your life difficult rather than just getting on with their lives by not camping out behind their front door waiting for you to knock on it.
Like pp said, arrogant.

@Viviennemary

Answer the door. What is wrong with people. So selfish and rude.

She was working. I’ve had it too OP. Delivery people hammering on the door because they can see me. But I work in healthcare from home and if I’m on a call to a patient I can’t answer the door.