Door-to-door saleswoman

[mariamousie1]

Wow. I was actually sympathetic with the lady until she sued him. What a bitch. My mom is terrified of snakes too, but if this had happened to her, I'm sure she would have called later, apologized, and arranged to get her stuff (making sure the snake would not be present). That woman must be completely nuts, trying to make sure he could never own any snakes. What the hell?

[BlackIronCrown]

Even though the judge found in favor of the defendant, he still failed for not awarding court costs due to it being a frivolous as HELL lawsuit.

Most often for cases like that, which usually are "small claims" and are taken before a magistrate, countersuits are required to recover costs.
Once you get to the state/superior level, it's usually a different story.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Throwing the case out just isn't enough for me.

The judge should've had everybody in the courtroom stand up, point at the plaintiff and laff laff laff.

[the lawsmeister]

As she was closing the door one the them stuck his foot in so she couldn't close it.

I believe the correct response here is:
*slam door*
"hmm something's wrong with my door"
*slam*
"It won't close properly"
*slam*
"It must be faulty"
*slam*
"I'll have to call a handyman"
*slam*

But then I'm a little evil at times.

[One-Fang]

Eeep.

The snake licking incident, were I the deliverer, may have resulted in death. No, I wouldn't have lashed out. I'd have simply died on the spot.

Ditto the spider one.

Got a screamer in the emails today. I check our spam/junk filters at work and someone had sent someone at work a video of "giant dead snake". You pan up the body of this snake and it gets bigger and bigger, it's quite big. Just as you get to the head, it lashes out. The camerman must've dropped it based on what you see next, but I nearly freaking wet myself! Got totally caught by that one.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

My last apartment(well, duplex actually) was plagued by all sorts of door to door salespeople, some worse than others. The worst set of miscreants at that location were two "college students" selling magazines. I'm an avid reader, so I was fairly amenable at first and talked to them for a little bit. A couple things struck me as odd. First of all, they didn't have student IDs they could show me. Secondly, they stated they were trying to save up money for spring break. Third, most of the prices were in excess of what it would cost me to get the subscription through the publisher. When I told them I wasn't interested any longer, they were a bit confrontational and I finally just slammed the door. I guess they thought they'd get me, and one of them pushed my mailbox over(post was a 4x4 set into a concrete filled milk can, had to do that after the city plows sheared the box from the lawn 2x the previous winter). I called the cops and told them what happened, and they responded fairly quickly. There was no damage to the mailbox, so the officer made the kids pick it up. However, he did ticket both of them for soliciting without a city permit and proceeded to roust the rest of the vanful of "students".


I think the best instance of a door-to-door "getting theirs" happened back when I was still in high school. Two men dressed in suits came to the door just before dinnertime and were asking to see Mr Badenaugh. Mom thought they were lawyers that dad worked with(pops was a judge) and he'd just forgotten to tell her he was having a meeting that evening, so she let them in and sent them to the dining room where dad had case notes spread out and was working. They proceeded to inundate dad with religious literature and were trying to "save him from his heathen ways". I'm not sure how long dad put up with it before he started yelling at them, but when his voice raised, I started to go into the room, but mom stopped me, thinking I was going to do some damage(at the time it was on my mind, lol). Mom calmly walked into the room and informed them that they needed to leave before we called the cops to have them removed for tresspassing. Mom was basically told to shut up and let the men talk, at which point dad started turning red and was pretty much screaming at them to get the hell out. At this point she picked up the phone and called the chief of police at home and said "two men are threatening judge Badenaugh and won't leave." First cop car arrived in about 2 minutes, and in less than 10 we had a half dozen squad cars arrayed in the street. The two missionaries were led from the house in cuffs and booked for threatening a judge and resisting arrest.

The best part came the next day when they were brought before dad for their bail hearing and he told them "I can't preside over this, as I'm listed as the wronged party. You will have to wait 2 days until judge C gets back from vacation." Ultimately the charges were dropped at dad's request, he thought their 3 nights in jail waiting was enough of a punishment.

[Chromatix]

Personally, I am "appropriately wary" of animals I'm not familiar with - especially if they have big teeth or other sharp things attached, or are potentially poisonous. I think this is called "self preservation". :-)

But I'm glad to say that I don't have any phobias as such. I've even handled one of those corn-snakes without any trouble (and it seemed to like me).

[Auto]

I am disappointed he didn't get judgment against her for his court costs and lost income time.

I'm surprised he didn't hire a lawyer to have her case dismissed while simultaneously suing her to recover his costs.

I'm also surprised the lady found a lawyer to take her case.

[IEatCustomers4Breakfast]

Wow. That's ridiculous. And shame on the lawyer who took her case.

[Skrae]

My roommate had a similar encounter (though without the lawsuit).

We ordered pizza, and my roommate was handling one of his snake, a small ball-python. Well, the snake ending up wrapping itself around my roommates waist, even going so far as to "snake through" some of the belt loops.


Well, my roommate forgot it was there when the pizza guy rang the doorbell. He got up to pay for the pizza, and just as the delivery guy stretched out his hand to hand over the pizza, the snake licked him. The delivery guy jumped about 2 feet in the air...

Then started laughing, and just said "Man, that scared the shit out of me!". He thought the whole thing was rather amusing in the end

Reminds me of when I stayed at my friend's house for a while. Her mom runs a reptile rescue center out of her house and at least used to (Don't think she still does) do parties and stuff. Well on of the snakes was this nice sized python (bout 5 feet long, 5 or 6 inches at its widest). I'm sitting at my computer, she comes home from a show, puts it right next to my face without me noticing, and it licks me. I'm glad it was extremely well behaved and docile since I jumped very noticeably. (I know pythons are constrictors, but I'm sure they don't mind biting if alarmed).

[Chromatix]

I forget (or rather, I'm not a snake expert), but I think that pythons (and other constrictors) are generally not venomous - so even if it did bite you, it wouldn't be an emergency. It would still hurt though!

But when a snake "licks" you like that, it's just doing the local equivalent of sniffing your crotch. It's being friendly and trying to get to know you!

[Dreamstalker]

I reach out a hand to tap the shoulder right as this fuzzy spider about the size of my hand crawls up onto it. I freeze and must have made some sound of distress cause the snake worker looked up and saw a wide eyed customer looking about to scream blood murder.

One year during an Audubon Society trip to Belize, we toured the less-touristy of the local ruins. When we got back to the bus, the guide revealed that I had been carrying a tarantula on my hat for god-knows-how-long (luckily it was one of the fuzzy nonpoisonous-to-humans ones...quite pretty IIRC). At the time I was getting over my arachnophobia so wasn't that freaked (surprised I hadn't felt the thing yes, but not freaked), another girl completely flipped "ZOMG it could have bit you and you could have died!" etc.

When my stepfather had a couple rental properties on Nantucket (this was before it got really popular and touristy) we would take the Hy-Line ferry over every summer for a week or two. One trip over, we were sitting around in the snack bar and we see a man with two very large ball pythons. He could see I was curious (the smaller of the two snakes was probably longer than I was tall) and asked me if I wanted to touch the snakes. I say "yes", he looks at my mom who nods. The smaller of the two snakes takes to me right away, deciding to hang out on me for awhile. Stepfather and half the boat was just staring, maybe surprised that a little kid could be so calm around something that could possibly have her for lunch.

[MadMike]

Got a screamer in the emails today. I check our spam/junk filters at work and someone had sent someone at work a video of "giant dead snake". You pan up the body of this snake and it gets bigger and bigger, it's quite big. Just as you get to the head, it lashes out. The camerman must've dropped it based on what you see next, but I nearly freaking wet myself! Got totally caught by that one.

Someone sent me that same one, and I know what you mean.

[Skrae]

I forget (or rather, I'm not a snake expert), but I think that pythons (and other constrictors) are generally not venomous - so even if it did bite you, it wouldn't be an emergency. It would still hurt though!

But when a snake "licks" you like that, it's just doing the local equivalent of sniffing your crotch. It's being friendly and trying to get to know you!

I know, I'm just jumpy. I know they're not venomous, I just wasn't expecting it, I might have needed stitches though.

[the toy guy]

We've had a story running on our local news recently about a door-to-door salesman. The guy was using a high-pressure pitch to get people to switch phone and internet services. When people refused, he became rude and left, and some of the "customers" later found fresh key marks on their cars. After this happened five or six times, a resident confronted the salesman, who began punching him repeatedly. Last I heard, the guy had been arrested and the police were prepering to file charges.