...when it comes to door-to-door salescritters, fundraisers, religious looneys and other scum who bother me at home.

I think I'm a fairly polite person, overall. However I do know that towards professional door knockers I'm very rude, and that's absolutely on purpose.

• First, if you ignore the 'no salespeople' sticker on my door (at chest height, really hard to miss), then in my book this constitutes full acceptance of any amount of rudeness on my part.

  The two begging bastards that I sent packing this afternoon claimed the sticker doesn't apply to them "when fundraising", upon which I pointed out that in this case politeness doesn't apply to them, either.

• Second, it's quite amazing how badly many of these fellows take being treated rudely.

  I really like that, because it makes my revenge so much sweeter. In return for them annoying me greatly, I annoy them back - and it would be a shame if they didn't care at least a bit :-)

• Third, it's pretty quick. A few choice words followed by slamming the door in the critter's face very efficiently terminates all unnecessary arguments and delay tactics like discussing how I am or what their name is (they rarely ever get far enough to tell me what crap they want me to buy or what cause to donate for).