5mo ago

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As a former Jehovah's Witnesses turned atheist, you all have fun, but I'm not spending my Saturday knocking on doors anymore.
- I'm genuinely curious about how the average interaction went, given that you weren't immediately turned away.
  
  I'll second what QuantumSparkles said. Mostly uninterested or feign interest so you go away. Rarely actual anger. People have an inherent politeness that kicks in here.
  Not that someone inside could say it, but you tend to hope that people won't come to the door. Lots of doorbells either don't work or you can't hear them from the outside, so you learn tricks to pretend to press it.
  
  I was raised that way and got out in my late 20’s (way too long). 7/10 doors nobody answers, most of the people who do either say “no thank you” or “thanks but I have my own religion”, a fair amount of the time you’ll get someone who feigns interest and takes the material just so you’ll leave and they don’t have to feel impolite (it’s not impolite to say no). Sometimes you’ll get someone legit interested. Sometimes you’ll get someone who a n g e r y
  
  That's fascinating. If you don't mind me asking what percentage would you say were angry? And where were you knocking? (Approximately).
  I worked in a call centre for a summer (no hard sell but it was an awful job) and location and politeness were directly correlated.
  I've only had one JW call to my door. I'm atheist a long time now. Well over thirty years but we had a very nice interaction. He called back a second and third time, bless his heart.
  
  Very small percentage were angry, hostile, or adversarial. I’d say less than 10%. And we preached everywhere. That was the point. Suburban, rural, city, houses, apartments, even businesses
- That's fair
- Good on you. Thank you for seeing reason. That was objectively awful.

62 comments