Do you automatically open the front door yo a knock or bell ring?

My late best friend who once worked as a call-handler for the 999 team kept a policeman's hat on a stand which was visible from her porch door. Then she married a fireman and his hat went next to it.

Crossstitchfan

crazyH

No, not always. I may sound mean, but I have one neighbour/friend who knocks almost daily. There’s only so much I can listen to, her family (widow, no children) who don’t visit, all the young men in the pub, who want to date her (she is 85). One wants to whisk her off on a cruise. Maybe I’m jealous, but I’m just about tired of hearing the same old, same old …….so , I don’t answer her knock, 4 days out of 7 😂

I think you’d be justified in reducing that to one day out of seven! You must have the patience of a saint!

Silly me! I meant increase it to not answering 6 days out of 7. If you don’t want this person’s company, you don’t need to accommodate it!
I had a male colleague once who kept calling on me. He and his wife had become friends of my husband and me. He and I both worked shifts at the same place so he knew when I was off. If my children were at home, they would warn me if they saw him parking the car and we would all hide behind the sofa! If they weren’t, I was on tenterhooks that he would come. He could see into the lounge from the front so knew I was there. It was a nightmare.

No, I haven't got the time or energy for that I just open the door.

Sparklefizz

No, I don't automatically open, I always check.
I used to be married to a police officer so I do the sensible thing.

I also keep doors locked during the day, dating back to one bathtime with the children years ago when my husband suddenly loomed in the bathroom doorway and said "I could have been anyone. You didn't hear me. Keep the door locked."

I always look out of the window if someone's at the door, and once it gets dark, I go upstairs and call out from an upstairs window.

I'm married to a retired police officer. He just opens the door and he'd ask me what was going on if I started running upstairs and calling out the window.

I keep my front and back doors locked all the time . If someone knocks I look out the window to see if there's a delivery van.
I also have a NO COLD CALLERS notice on my window near the front door. that doesn't always stop them from knocking.

Always have, always do.
Many years ago, about 9.30 ish one summer evening, all my young children in bed, hubbie was driving my parents home, bell rang.

Two youngsters (about 15 o 16 year olds -both so much bigger than me), were on my porch asking to come in to use my phone (years before mobile phones). They told me that they had been chased by a gang of skinheads, and needed to phone their parents. In my head I went through a scenario where I was telling the police I had let these two into my house, etc.etc.
I asked for the telephone number of one set of parents, then left them on the porch and went back in to make that call.
Yes, they were telling the truth, and I brought them in to wait for parents to turn up. They told me they had tried umpteen front doors and I was the first one to answer.

Many years later, after I was retired, one November dark night my front door bell was run at 9.00 pm. I was too curious NOT to answer, opening my front door, and it was a Community Policeman trying to ensure that we 'oldies' all knew how properly to lock our doors and windows. I was furious with him coming at that time of night, especially as when I first opened the door and saw him on the other side of the porch door in his uniform, it brought back a total recall of the time so many years earlier when a policeman had called to tell me of the death of my youngest child!!

Following day neighbours were all saying about someone ringing their bells so late and none of them had opened their doors. I made a formal complaint to the local police station and did receive an official apology = evidently they had not realised that he was going house to house so very late, and he did not realise how frightening he had been by ringing front door bells of elderly people so late.

I just hurl myself behind the sofa.

I've got security cameras anyway - courtesy of bad neighbours doing things like trespassing in my garden (of which I had a LOT when I first moved here and there was one that used to do so on a virtually daily basis!). That stopped when they realised I'm not "some little woman who can be pushed around", but instead a "far from daft - person" and had been used to being treated as a "person" since around the 1980s/my 30's.

So I often spot someone is coming to visit me some way off and can decide accordingly - as I've seen who the visitor is. The set-up here is such that there's a pretty high chance anyone coming up the road might be for me anyway and I can usually tell if they're a regular visitor to one of those neighbours.

Add that I can open a sitting room window if I want to to talk to them and I could keep my porch door locked if I wanted to and talk to them from inside my porch.

Workmen here joke about just how fast I lock one of my outside doors when they come into the house - and I tell them it's because I used to live in a city centre and house right on the street...so I automatically do so usually. Add in those bad neighbours.....and yep.

We have a porch beyond our main door so I can actually see who’s outside . If we didn’t have that we’d definitely have a video doorbell.

For the last 30 plus years I have been able to see who is at the door before opening the door and at night we have a very bright security light that illuminates them.

Our front door is large and thick. That is how the built them in the mid 18th century, so no peephole. We may get a cctv camera as the front door is not visible from the road.