Be Aware of Where You Answer the Call of Nature, You Might be On Camera

Ginger Harper's question today about The Call of Nature brought up some interesting answers. 

My own response: 

I think as a listing agent, I might have this discussion with my seller and if they have strong feelings against it, put it in the showing instructions to please not use the facilities. Otherwise, I'd suggest they designate a powder room or guest bath as the preferred destination. 

As a buyer agent, I'd honor the seller instructions, if any, then otherwise wing it. It happens. Check for water flow first, be neat, be clean, and I'd likely feel compelled to check afterward and all should be fine."

Yada yada yada, blah blah blah. Nothing particularly exciting in that response, eh?

Interestingly, though, Fred Griffin's response included: "I direct men to the back yard." My response to his comment was: "Hmm, as a seller if I found that out it would p*ss (pun intended) me off much more than having them just use the indoor plumbing. To explain why I think that a blog post will be required. :0)"

Certainly nothing against Fred's having an opinion or policy which contrasts mine, the concept just happens to pluck a sore-spot for me and I thought I'd expand some on that.

So, here {said in my best Paul Harvey imitation} is The Rest of the Story ... 

Logically I know a person urinating in the yard is no worse than the dog doing the same thing in the same place. However, it is just plain rude (in my opinion). On a roadside is one thing, while out camping another, etc., but on a person's private property without their go ahead? Nooooo.

Of course, I might be a little (overly?) sensitive about people peeing on my property having once captured with our front-door security camera a missionary "watering the plants" from our front porch.  

Yes, a bonafide let-me-convert-you-to-my-religion missionary. 

I work at home and never answer the door if I'm not expecting - or recognize as a welcome intrusion - whoever is standing on my porch (thus the security camera so I can see who's out there and decide whether or not to answer). The camera is not hidden in the least, btw, as I wish people to know that they're potentially being viewed/recorded. 

In this particular case I wasn't home at the time but, for some forgotten reason, I was later scrolling through the alert videos captured that day. In one, I saw that two missionaries had approached the house, rung the bell, waited a bit, then turned to go. No big deal, these two had dropped by 1x or 2x a month for a long time now, only to be ignored by me.  

I was about to delete the video when I saw that instead of leaving directly one stopped and proceeded to urinate off the side of our little entry porch and the other stood there laughing.

Imagine my surprise! 

I wrote a scathing letter, complete with a still image captured from the video footage clearly showing the two men's faces and another clearly (well, not so clearly that it had to have censor marks) showing what the one was doing. I also included a warning that if I ever caught them doing that again I'd go straight to their Ward President with the evidence. I posted it front and center on the door and got a good laugh from my husband and many visitors.

This was years ago and I've only seen saw those two missionaries come back to the house ONE time since then - they read the sign and left quickly (after which I took it down).

It's possible, in fact, that our house might now be on the official do-not-approach list as we haven't had any known visits from any of the local missionaries since then.

Darn.

Moral of the story: Be aware of where you answer the call of nature, you might be on camera! 

Cross-posted from my SpinOneGroup.com blog, At Your Service.