What do you do when solicitors visit your house?

[Kitsa]

I had a couple of friends once who would keep pestering the live ebay help people. At least, I think it was ebay.

Anyway, there was some link that would open up a chat window and someone would be all, "Hi, I'm Dave! How can I help you today?"

I can't remember how long it took but one friend eventually established that the whole ebay help chat thing was manned by a relatively small group of people, presumably at cubicles in the same room. Sometimes you'd get Dave, sometimes you'd get John, sometimes Eva or Courtney. So he'd get Dave and ask some question, and then he'd say something like, "I don't like your answer. Let me talk to Eva."

It got to where he was egging these people on against each other and Courtney would tell you that Dave was cute but she liked John better. It was entertaining until they discontinued the feature, or at least changed it so he couldn't talk to the same group anymore.

[Zhukov]

People only come door to door here if they are collecting money, and if it's for anything other than a church I usually give. I've never had a mormon or jehova's witness knock.

Phone calls usually come when I am sick off of work with a migraine, and I drag myself out of bed and answer because if it keeps ringing it must be important, right? "I'm sorry I have a migraine" and then hang up works... well, it's what I do and it's not a lie.

What gets me are people standing in the street collecting bank details for Greenpeace. It's always people with US or UK accents, since they hire backpackers, and anything other than white might not be well received. I can't help but stop and listen because I am too polite/weak to just keep walking. I signed up once and they took $20 out of my account per month for 24 months. I tell them at the end of their spiel that I haven't got a lot of money so I can't help them, sorry.

I have sold newspapers in the street before, and manned a left wing stall at a market. I produced very bad results since I didn't bother shouting out to people or do much else other than stare into middle distance.