My fiance and I recently bought our first home. Yay! Super exciting, love the house and family is coming to visit to see this weekend. For background, my fiance travels a lot for work and not knowing the neighborhood that well other than general crime checks, we do have security concerns since I’m home alone and I had a bad stalker experience in college.

The other day, I was in the house just fixing together bed frame, by myself. We’ve been warned that I shouldn’t make it known I’m home alone until we know neighbors better, and just general advice like that. An ADT affiliate came up to the house, in the middle of me fixing things, and knocks on door for cold call. I figured, ok well we’re gonna need a security system at some point, poor guys, I’ll hear them out. But a couple of things just came across as suspicious during the conversation, like he didn’t have a business card, was trying to give bad sales pitch instead of just being straight forward (like dude- you don’t have to explain to me why security is important, we live in a Major HCOL city). He was asking about my windows, doors, etc. Gives me a paper with cost estimates, his name/number and pops off with his “trainee”.

I was suspicious- like who cold calls nowadays? And called ADT to verify employment. They tell me, he’s not an employee. The sun is setting, I’m home alone with pup and start freaking out. This type of ‘squatting’ scenario is what we were warned about, and I just walked into it by explaining our windows/doors, everything someone would need to know to break into house.

I call police, my fiance (whose on international travel), my dad; and THEN, my dog ran away in a gap in the fence in my backyard, and wasn’t coming back to my calls (we’re getting invisible fence this Thursday, he usually always comes back). The sun is only going down further, I’m freaking out thinking I just set myself up to get kidnapped and now I think I’ve lost our dog that I love from the bottom of my heart. Screaming his name, god bless the neighbors, he finally comes back, and I BEAT FEET out of my house cause all I have for protection is a hammer. And my fiance wants me to update him when I’m in the car, when I’m home; cause now he’s legit concerned I have guys squatting on us.

Finally, I get home, let neighbors know about my experience after they heard me screaming my head off; they probably think I’m getting cold feet bc they kept assuring me there’s been no house break-ins on street (which I felt bad about, I love our house). Updated police cause I got a cam grab of guy’s face, update everyone I love to let them know I’m home safe, and it took me three calls to ADT to find out more about this guy. He wasn’t a squatter. He was an affiliate employee.

But I can’t explain how stressful and awful of an experience was for me. I told the sales guy, don’t do cold calls- do you understand how scary that is for a female whose home alone a lot? Especially having stalker experiences in past. But of course they won’t listen, they have their reasons for it. And it just makes me so mad because it truly upset me, my neighbors, my loved ones; and now I just feel like an ass for being wrong and wasting everyone’s time.

I guess I also just want to vent- but for many hours yesterday, I thought my naivety put myself, my family and neighbors in danger and I think cold calls for security are absolutely so disrespectful.