Dropping By To Visit - Unannounced

This drives me nuts. I’m country through and through but the very worst side effect of that is having people show up unannounced. My husband’s brother and wife used to show up out of the blue…and he was proud of it. He’d say We don’t call, we just come!

Really? How do you know I wasn’t masturbating on the couch with a stack of crackers balanced in my belly button for after? Hmmm?

In Victorian times people used to stop by but would leave calling cards in the bowl on the table in the foyer.

Just drop mine in the mailbox.

I personally don’t mind it, but it almost never happens. My father or mother will sometimes drop by for a few minutes unannounced, but that’s fine. At my parent’s house, on Sundays, my parents occasionally do get unannounced visitors, but that’s the way they’ve always been. It’s never been a huge deal for me, but I wouldn’t do it in this day and age to people who I know did not grow up with that sort of lifestyle. If I’m in the hood, I’ll send a text or call to see if they’re around for a few minutes, but won’t stop by without doing so. Before cell phones were ubiquitous, it would sometimes happen (like in college, or while living abroad, where social rules were a little different.)

While I will occasionally stop by my parent’s house unannounced (about once every 2 months) and less frequently, my sister and BIL’s house, I don’t stop by anyone else’s house unannounced.

And although it happens extremely infrequently (like once every 3-4 years), I tend to get pretty darned annoyed when people show up at my place unannounced.

Well, no. There are people alive who remember a time without having a telephone in their home; I’m quite sure that in those times people would visit neighbors without mailing them letters in advance.

The days of the unannounced visit died, I think, with the universality of cell phones. Much as even sven suggests, when I’m in the area and think about popping in on a friend, I will always call from wherever I am (maybe parked two blocks away), to check and see if they are up for company.

The practice of dropping by, unannounced, means that the droppers expect to be welcomed at any time, and expect their hosts to drop everything and entertain them. In other words, people who like to just drop by unannounced generally think that the world revolves around them. They can’t believe that there is anything more fascinating to do than to sit and visit with them until they finally leave. This custom also assumes that the hosts are always prepared for visitors. When you have people who like to drop by anyone, and then you have people who have to work shift work, this isn’t a good combination. My inlaws, for instance, never seemed to understand that if my husband was working graveyard shifts, he needed to sleep during the day, and wouldn’t necessarily enjoy his parents coming around to talk with him for four hours. And they’d get really, really pissed at me when I told them that I wasn’t going to wake him up for them to natter at him for half the day. That’s another problem with this custom…the people who drop by consider it extremely rude if they are told that no, it’s not convenient for their hosts to entertain them.

It used to be pretty common when home phones were rare. Even before cell phones, most people could either pick up their home phones and ask if it was convenient to come by, or locate a public phone and call. When I lived in Spain, it was pretty common for the military family members to drop by their friend’s place, because we didn’t have phones at home.

Definitely. At my in-laws’ house in Colombia the neighbors will sometimes just walk in the the front door without knocking or waiting to be asked in. (It’s often open because of the heat.) They just kind of say (the equivalent of) “Hey, what’s up,” and come right in.

The OP is clearly talking about the U.S., where I suppose the only kind of place where this happens is at college dorms.

I don’t drop by unannounced at all, it’s easy enough to send a quick text to ask if the person is free and wants visitors as you never know what other folks are doing.

Personally, I don’t like unexpected visitors when I’m at home. I don’t have a lot of spare time at home during the week and every evening has something scheduled into it so that I can keep on top of all the necessary domestic chores. This also allows me a bit more flexibility at the weekends although even those two days have specific commitments.

If someone did turn up out of the blue, of course I would do my best to accommodate them but I think I’d also make it clear that I was busy doing something else at the time and that next time it would be better if they’d at least called to say they wanted to come by.

And yes, I am a grumpy old woman!

Well, clearly not, as other posts have shown, although it seems to have gotten quite rare in the cell phone age. Some family and old neighborhood friends will occasionally drop by if they’re in the neighborhood, but we’re talking about the order of a couple times a year, at most, and at my parent’s place it happens with regularity. But all parties involved know that they don’t mind.

Maayybe family. I did drop by unannounced at a friends house a couple of weeks ago to help her move, but she is my best friend and I knew it would be appreciated.

As I’ve posted many times, I’m all about the Golden Rule. I’m not prepared for unannounced visitors, but there are plenty of folks I’d love to see if they called and said “we’ll be near your place in about half an hour. Okay if we stop by?”

It gives me enough time to straighten up at least. If I get a whole day of notice I bake treats to share.

I have a group of friends in another part of the country who regularly just stop over at each others’ houses without calling or texting, and expect to be let in. They’re constantly trying to get me to move back up there, and I think they would be terribly surprised to find that my door is locked and even if I’m sitting on the couch watching Veronica Mars and telling the dog how bored I am, they’re still not coming in.

Several years ago, I had a friend show up at my place during the first night I had totally to myself in weeks. I answered the door and told him I wasn’t accepting visitors, and he needed to call before he came over. As soon as I got back into the living room, my phone rang. Still in the hallway outside my apartment, my friend asked if he could come over and hang out. I said “No, and if you’d called before you left your house, you’d have saved yourself the gas.”

I think if my family lived in the area, I might not be terribly put out if they stopped by now and then. But I already live with my best friend, and the rest of my group is spread out or homebody-ish enough to not want to get off their own couches, let alone come take up mine.

I never drop in unannounced, but it wasn’t always so. When I was a young adult, me and my friends were always dropping in on one another. That changes over time, I think.

This is something that drives me nuts with the NBC series “Parenthood,” which I otherwise love. The characters all drop in on each other, at both homes and workplaces, completely unannounced and it makes me crazy every single time (which is a minimum of three times per episode.)

Ugh, I HATE the idea of people dropping by unannounced, even my parents. They’ve done it occasionally with friends who want to see my house or whatever and I’m in my pajamas and haven’t taken a shower - I think after the last time clarity on that was achieved.

I very rarely drop in on them unannounced, unless I can’t get them or know they aren’t home and need to leave them something. Come on, do you want even the slightest chance of seeing your parents naked? (I do let myself in.)

Ugh, this gives me a flashback to the time I lived with roommates who were from a variety of social backgrounds and areas of the US. Among the lot of us, it seemed to be an urban vs. rural thing – I and my roommates who had grown up in urban or suburban areas were very averse to having people dropped in unannounced or doing to that to others, but my roommate who had grown up in farm country couldn’t see what the big deal is.

I never drop by unannounced because I don’t know if you have plans and I think it would be terribly rude of me to put you in a position to have to either alter your plans to accommodate me or make you feel uncomfortable in shooing me away from your door. I don’t want to do that to people I like.

Family, on the other hand…:stuck_out_tongue: Nah, but I hardly ever do it to them, either.

Just call or text first, jeez.

Well, yes. That it happened and was forgiven or overlooked didn’t make it any less rude. Before telephones, people had “at home” days, when people were allowed, encouraged, to come by without a written invitation and everyone knew everyone else’s visiting days. People may give their friends a lot of leeway, especially in an emergency situation, but you’d better believe they got talked about for dropping in unexpectedly. You can parse this any way you want, but the societal bottom line was that it was, and is, rude to unexpectedly drop in to people’s houses.

This is what I’ve always been told.

I never drop by anybody unannounced, and my family and friends know better. It’s not that I wouldn’t let them in (I might, but no guarantees–depends on how close we are and what state the house is in) but that as an introvert I consider it highly rude for someone to inflict themselves on me in my home without at least giving me a chance to say, “Hey, you know, tomorrow would really be better if that’s okay with you. I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”

I still shudder when I think about all the times my mother would drag me with her whenever she’d drop in unannounced on my older sister, who was in her early 20s (I would have been a dumb teenager) at the time. My mother would knock on the door and my poor sister would take five minutes to answer it. We’d always come into the house to find a guy sitting awkwardly on the couch and a certain herbal essence in the air. It was always so uncomfortable for all us, and yet my mother kept doing it. She didn’t stop doing it until my sister moved far away to the suburbs.

Depends on what you mean by unannounced. It is possible to set up a routine, where you don’t normally ask. It’s just where you go on Monday nights, for example. It’s also possible that the person has literally told you that you can drop by anytime and meant it (usually an elderly relative). I personally don’t count those as “unannounced,” and voted accordingly, but you might. I also didn’t count emergency situations, but I’m sure you don’t count those either.

As for others doing it to us, only one person does it, and it’s a family member that is, well, a bit boorish. Even then, it’s very occasionally, and it’s always presented as an invitation, not him just barging in. He knocks, and then asks he and his wife can stick around for a bit to talk. Usually this is when he can’t afford his cell phone bill (and he has no house phone).

My mom though is always worried that someone will come over to her house, particularly when she’s sick. While everyone calls nowadays, I take it that wasn’t always the case in the past.