Five guys knocked on my front door yesterday, and asked me to show them around my flat. I said no.
They were annoyed, but I was adamant. All my flatmates were out, and I didn't want to waste the next three and a-half minutes (it's a small house), giving them a tour.
Was my refusal justified? My mother thought so; in fact, she said that inviting five strange men inside, especially while I was home alone, would have been nothing short of stupid.
But door-to-door cold calling is how most students find a flat for the next year. And landlords encourage this, of course, because they don't need to advertise, organise viewing opportunities, or even make time to show potential tenants around their properties.
I resent this unwritten code in student flat-hunting behaviour. I'm not a real-estate agent! If I were, I certainly wouldn't work for free.
I think I am being responsibly generous in greeting potential residents on our threshold, providing them with our landlord's number, and then politely shutting the door before they can irritate me any further.
Because I have the front bedroom, the front door answering is usually left to me. For this reason, I don't think I'll choose a front bedroom ever again.
It's not a long walk from my desk to the front door, but I claim that it's enough to disrupt my creative process. Writers are always going on about the creative process; apparently it's something which should never be interrupted.
Anyway, it's easier to exploit this creative process concept as an excuse for not answering the door, than to admit my real excuse: I don't want to remove the mohair blanket I've oh-so-carefully tucked over my knees, I don't want to neglect my warm cup of tea (within three and a-half minutes, it will be cold) and, most of all, I don't want to open my door because that would allow precious heat to escape from my room.
Why are some students in such a rush to sign for a flat, anyway? Our first door-knockers arrived well before the end of last semester. I was a little less polite to them.
I felt like booting them down the doorstep, actually, since these students are the reason that all of us have to pay for twelve-month leases.
I wish I'd told them that. I wish I'd booted them, and then, in a moment of melodrama, yelled after them: "You students are the reason that I have to spend my summer watching the clock tick! You are the reason that my clock-watching earnings are then spent on a flat that I don't even live in for half the year!"
In reality, I would never boot anyone. I would probably do something more passive-aggressive, like write a column about it.
And then, when people ask me if it's true that I don't like door-knockers, I'll quote Phillip Lopate and tell them that writers must maximise small differences and project them theatrically.
Hopefully they don't then ask how we found this flat: Because that's not an answer that I'm proud of.
- Katie Kenny studies English at the University of Otago.
