I’m sitting here with a huge knot on my knee and it’s the mailman’s fault.
I worked graveyard shift last night, came home, went to bed about 9. At precisely 1:17 p.m., the mailman arrived. He had a certified letter that needed to be signed for.
Did he knock on the door? No. That would be civilized.
I was jerked out of a sound sleep by what sounded like Detritus the troll using a battering ram to hammer nails into the side of my house. From dead asleep to panicked wakefuness in .03 seconds, I leapt from my bed, spun blindly around to see where the missiles were falling, slammed the edge of my knee soundly into the dresser, and crumpled to the floor.
Over the sounds of my swearing and the dog barking hysterically in the living room, I heard my husband answer the door. A minute later he came back to the bedroom, looked at me on the floor, held out a letter and said, “It’s for you.” Then he looked at my knee and said, “Ohhh. You’d better put some ice on that.”
Ya think?
Waking up makes me cranky under the best of circumstances. People who wake me up by trying to give me a heart attack really make me want to hit something.
Yeah, they do knock like the PO-lice, don’t they? Ours around here are one step worse: after beating on the door about six or seven times, they proceed to ring the doorbell until we answer the door.
Our apartment walls are so thin you can hear peole outside talking in normal voices with perfect clarity, and my husband sleeps during the day. You can imagine the warm welcome he gives these guys.
This happens to me too, and I hate it. I work nights and sleep until about 2 p.m. every day, and of course I want my letter – but I don’t want the huge adrenaline rush of someone pounding the door like there’s a war outside. Just knock normally or ring the bell once or twice, and I’ll get up, get the letter, and go back to sleep without feeling like I just got electrocuted.
My mailman does that, too. In addition to that, he’s a huge asshole. If you don’t answer the door immediately after his knock of doom, he’s rude and mumbly.
But if he just left a note and you had to go to the PO the next day, all the while wondering what the hell could be Certified, wouldn’t you also be a tad grumpy?
When I did home visits, people who didn’t answer the door annoyed the shite out of me. My handy dandy carry-case doubled as battering ram and the instant response received over my forty visits per day ensured I went home on time.
I am going to defend our Postal Champions here. They knock loud so that you hear them, and so that they can get your signature and move on. If they politely tap, nobody will hear with the TV, Stereo, Ipod, Xbox, or downloaded porn. They would then leave a note, and the next thing is their supervisor gets told that “the mailman never knocked, he just left a note the lazy bastard!”
The postal folks are screwed either way. They can be polite in their knocking, and miss deliveries and get yelled at - or they can pound on the door, make their deliveries, and get yelled at.
Understood, but there has to be a happy medium between a little old ladyish “tap tap tap” and “OHMIGOD the infantry is breaching the walls TAKE COVER BANG BANG BANG!!” People being chased by zombies packing flamethrowers knock less urgently than this guy did.
Aw. See, my mailcarrier is awesome. Every day, he walks by my big floor-to-ceiling bay window and I hear him say: “Hi Pirate!”, and my australian shepherd service dog goes somewhat apeshit barking and spinning in circles… he drops the mail in the box cheerfully… and occasionally drops in a biscuit for the dog, too.
When he has a package or a letter that requires my attention, he runs up the steps, knocks relatively quietly, and is always quite cheerful. Maybe I simply lucked out
Sorry about the jerk you ended up with. 'Course, I suspect they’re also tired of hearing from people who complain that they never heard the knock…
Doesn’t anybody have doorbells anymore (except freekalette)? The only deliveries I’ve had at my new place have been food, but the drivers have always just rung the doorbell, once, and waited a reasonable amount of time for me to answer the door.
