What would you do if a scraggly homeless person knocked on your door, and all he asked was for a sandwich, a bottle of water, a bath, and perhaps a beard trim?
I've actually skipped work just to help a homeless guy get his beard trimmed. Bought him pizza too. Kinda hard to get anywhere in life when you look like shit.
Be kind to the homeless, they just need a helping hand here and there.
I was a volunteer treasurer at a youth homeless shelter.
Sadly, it's not possible to evaluate someone's intentions when they knock on your door and ask for a sandwich. They might truly just want a sandwich, or they might have other intentions entirely.
That's not very true, unfortunately. Knocking allows someone to somewhat figure out if anyone is home, allows a person to gauge who is home (a man or a woman) and how easily the knocker can gauge overtaking them. Breaking in means the homeowner may have time to get a weapon and means the knocker will have to search for anyone home.
Getting them to come up to the door and see if they're armed makes it easy if a person is looking for a victim. People just breaking in are usually hoping no one is home and just wants to rob the place.
I guess it partly depends how far out in the woods you live. The dogs will announce an intruder before they even get 100 feet close to your home, and I had my cats trained to knock on the door knocker, when they weren't out eating rats anyways..
Honestly, the fella I helped didn't even knock on my door, I knocked on his 'door', while he was resting at a local bus stop.
I had already known the fella for a few months in passing on my bicycle rides. I realized he was a good decent honest person, but he needed a haircut and beard trim.
Well, I happened to have trimmers, and figured that was the least I could do to try to help him out. That, and a pizza and a beer, just because..