We didn't get much bother with people at the door trying to sell us stuff where I lived before. Mostly the secure entry system put them off. But if they chanced their arm and rang my bell, the conversation would go like this:
- Hello, could you buzz me in, please?
- Who are you looking for?
- Emmm (reading the nameplates) the Nisbets.
- My name is Nisbet. What do you want?
- It's about (gas, electricity, whatever).
- No, thanks. I don't buy at the door.
- I can save you money.
- Okay, who do you work for?
- Emmm, Scottish Hydro (yes, it was usually them)
- Fine, tell them to put their offer in writing.
But in my new wee house my door bell is at the mercy of every passing stranger, from folk trying to sell new windows and roofs to the neighbourhood to charities and local scout/church/school organisations leaving me bags to fill with 'jumble' for their sales of work. If I see them coming (one of the advantages of having a picture window in the livingroom) and I can spot them because they tend to travel in packs and wear lanyards, I just ignore them. If I'm upstairs when they ring the bell, I can look down to the front door: no uniform = no the emergency services = no answering the door. This is because I have arthritis: knees, back and shoulders. Stairs are a trial to me. I once joked with my sister, who has had arthritis much longer than me, that between us we've a one great pair of legs. Hers are great for going upstairs. Mine are great for coming down. She didn't laugh.
Today I was upstairs when the bell rang. I looked down and thought I saw not one but two hi-vis vests through the glass. I started downstairs. Sure enough, before I got halfway the bell rang again. Sh*t, I thought, this must be serious. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door and found two large young people filling the porch, wearing not just hi-vis vests but also lanyards which identified them as working for the Red Cross. I glowered at them. 'We're not that bad, are we?' said the female of the pair.
I explained that I have arthritis and also that I never, ever buy stuff at the door. They smiled and prepared to walk off. 'And why,' I asked as they walked away, 'are you wearing hi-vis vests?' But you, of course, know what's coming next: 'Health and Safety.'
There are some businesses in the modern world that I wish I'd got into early on: teaching Parcelforce drivers how to intimidate everybody on the road, selling tasteless and claggy cupcakes (fairy cakes as they used to be), designing the giant hands that hapless supermarket employees are forced to wave around to tell us where the queues are shorter (probably faster just to put the employee on a check-out I'd have thought but what do I know?). But most of all I wish I'd been in on the mania for hi-vis vests when it started. There must be millions of them around now, so many in fact that I suspect they no longer serve any purpose: we see them and ignore them. But the money that's been made - wow!
The UK has an appalling record of industrial accidents, one of the worst in Europe, despite us no longer being a mainly industrial country. I wonder how many lives have been saved by the wearing of a hi-vis vest? Or how many industrial tribunals have asked the question: were these employees wearing hi-vis vests when the train/bus/lorry ran them over? It's another example of lip-service: don't bother trying to improve our abysmal approach to industrial safety - just give them all a hi-vis vest.
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