What is your place in the community worth?

Here’s a question for you: What is the value you put on your standing within your immediate community? For me, this was posed by a kid on my doorstep Friday evening.

At 7pm Friday, some fresh faced kid is knocking on my door. This is annoying to me for two reasons. First, I’m waiting for a guest. Second, I have a large sign on my door that says to go away if you are soliciting. For those that do knock, I simply point to the sign and say, “Can’t you read?”

The pitch started with him being a marketing student & is walking the neighborhood. He’s got a shirt with a symbol on it, a clip board with a folder, and says he’s representing GE Capital (though on the third point I may be wrong & I didn’t get a card). He likes my house & wants to use it for advertising. eh? He wants to put a sign on my front yard & pay me for it.

How much is this kid offering? $5000/month. That number isn’t in dispute for he kept repeating it over and over, like a mantra. “$5000/month for a simple sign.” “It won’t be very big.” “Do you realize I’m offering to pay you $5000/month?”

I pointed to my sign & told him to leave. He stammers how can I turn away such an offer. I tell him he doesn’t own a house nor cares about the neighborhood. I live in San Jose, in a small house on a street built over 50 years ago. “Why would I want to deface my property & lower the value of my neighbors’ property by doing so?” No answer, other than I could do a lot with the $5000 monthly income. I tell him to leave my property, he won’t go. So I close the door on him while he is still pushing the dollar amount. Amazing.

I asked a couple neighbors at a garage sale yesterday if they were approached by this same person. Nope, no one else had such an incredible offer made to them.

Darlene came up with the idea that it could be a scam to get my bank account information. As I didn’t get past the “Go away & leave me alone” part, I couldn’t confirm if he was going to ask about where to deposit the checks. I should have gotten something from him so I could post it for all to see.

I took it as what is my community standing worth? I’m not sure what San Jose’s sign ordinance states, but still, anything that reduces the splendor of my neighborhood isn’t worth it. I don’t have a problem with a home owner putting a sign in their window that proclaims they are a Sharks fan (I have one for the SF Giants myself). But commercial advertising on private residential property? What does some corporate marketing nut take me to be? A sellout to my neighborhood?

What raises my blood pressure is that there doesn’t seem to be a limit to how low corporate advertising will go. For me, this is about where rattlesnakes live - as low in the grass as the dirt. I don’t want to walk the streets around my house & run into even more oppressive messaging. I want to be able to smell the roses & meet the people with dogs. Turn off the media. Be a person.

So here I make my stand. I can’t be bought to deface my own property & hope that my message will encourage others to do the same.

-Mike M.