When it's ok to be "rude". Suspicious individuals.

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I would like to talk about the fact that sometimes, not only is it ok to be "rude" but it is the right thing to do.

This situation usually arises when someone clearly takes advantage of your civility to take advantage of you.

Today, I got a knock on my door. As always, I asked who it was and a man's voice said "I have a question to ask you." I don't have a peephole and my security camera wasn't operating at the moment, and I thought the man was my neighbor as we have had some shared problems with the plumbing, and he sounded like my neighbor, so I opened the door.

Standing before me was not my neighbor...or any of my neighbors, but a 50 something year old man with a beard who I had never seen before. He said to me "I need to contact the owner of the building, do you have his phone numbers?" This is not an unusual question. The building is close to the one next door and on occasion, someone's tree will grow too big and damage cable or phone wires, or some such thing that requires someone speak to one building's landlord. I replied to the man "Not off hand but his name is (name) and I'm sure he's in the phone book."

Then the man asked me if I had a pen. I thought this was a bit odd. No one is perfect, but if one sets out on the task to collect information, you would think they'd be prepared to do so. I told the man, "No, I don't have a pen." I actually didn't.

He then asked me how much the units in this building rent for. I told him it varied and he'd have to speak to the landlord, and told him the general price range. I also told him that there were no units for rent in this building.

I then recalled there was a rental sign out front from when one of the units were available. The contact information on the sign goes to a well known rental classifieds company, but if you call about a certain property, they will put you in touch with the landlord. My landlord left the sign up because he owns other properties.

But I felt certain that the man didn't see the sign because it had fallen a bit into the bushes, and if he did see it, why would he be bothering me for contact information? It's right there on the sign, and it made no sense for him to come to my unit because my unit is set back from the rest, and the farthest from the sign, and most of my neighbors take advantage of the screen doors and leave their doors open, so I told him "There's a sign out front, it has the landlord's contact information on it."

He then asked me how long I have lived here. That was not pertinent to to anything relevant to him, and was none of his business. I then told him "Sir, I'm very busy, there is a sign out front," and proceeded to close the door as I told him to have a nice day.

For those of you who didn't pick up on it, he had an ulterior motive, and was using what I sometimes call the search worm technique, or the port scanner technique. This is employed by people to get their "foot in the door" with someone, in pursuit of some hidden motive.

This is how it works. The person approaches an individual who they are trying to get something from, and asks a question or presents a situation of an unrelated topic.

""I need to contact the owner of the building, do you have his phone numbers?"

He declares to need a phone number, but when this rout turns out to be a dead end and he sees he cannot continue to engage me with it, he drifts from the topic and tries a slightly different rout he hopes will continue to engage me without illiciting suspicion.

"Do you have a pen?"

When this also proves to be a dead end, he drifts a little further and tries again.

"How much are the units in this building?"

He thought this was a good save but this is where he really gave himself away and here is why.

Condition 1: He thought the place was had available units because he saw the rental sign out front. If this were the case, he would not have to bother me for contact information.

Condition 2: He did not see the rental sign out front.
If this were the case, he has no reason to inquiry me about renting a unit because there is no indicating a unit is for rent. There is nothing special about this building and it's generally unproductive to wander around the city asking building occupants about renting units in the building when there are clearing houses for rent listings.

When he saw this too was a dead end, he took a leap away from his initial topic, and gets a little closer to his real motive by asking a question pertaining to my personal condition.

"How long have you lived here?"

In the context of the situation...with our sex differences, age differences, the fact that my unit was out of the way, I was in my pajamas and trying to keep the cat from getting out, and made it clear I was not the person to talk to, and he REFRAINED from identifying himself explicitly when I asked who was at the door, by asking this question, he violated my intellectual personal space. A person who has motives that don't involve you, do not ask personal questions about you.

Remember, he supposedly just wanted contact information. I told him how to get it so he should have had no reason continuing to bother me. For some reason, he wanted to keep engaging me. Likely, he has a particular direction he wants to steer the conversation in, to a destination light years away from where he started.

He was a suspicious individual and made it clear he wanted to take advantage of my civility. And that is when it's ok to be rude so I did not wait for a confirmation from him that the conversation was over before I closed the door.

You might ask, how do I know all of this? How does someone with AS pick up on things like this? The answer is, because, being a woman who used to be a younger woman who admittedly looked innocent and naive, I was often the target of such individuals in the past.
They are easy to spot once you know what to look for, much like it's easy to spot when the dog is thinking about going after a cat, or bird, they put their heads low, ears forward, and stare intently.

i think that situational logic can sometimes trump the abilities others might have in reading someone's emotional cues.

or at least suffice.

i don't know what your suspicious stranger was after, but logic did not follow that it was what he claimed, and you arrived at that conclusion and avoided what could have been a dangerous situation.

i almost think your post should have been titled "trust your instincts" which would sound ironic as a lot of us do not have a reliable instinctive read on people. yet it is good you have illustrated that regardless, it is still possible to sense danger and steer clear of it.

this guy could have been someone who has been following you and was trying to acquire something of yours (your body, your wallet) or he could merely have been an ignoramus who knocked on a random door with idiotic questions. he either wasted your time or because of your good instincts he wasted his own.

I think he was just rude

I do usually ask some questions to the people that live in the building or in the same street about information on the area or the building itself (monthly charges...) I only do that with the people that I might cross on the hallway, on the street or in the shops around the place I am interested to move in. I would never dare to ring at a door to ask these information.

I think you did well and you don't need to over-analyze that much

It is actually not over analyzing. People like this man bait with arguably innocent questions. It is part of their strategy, but from experience I can tell you it is not innocent conversation. A man might experience a similar thing when trying to be pursuaded to by something or support a cause, and so being proactive isn't really needed because there is little risk to himself, but as a woman, when I was younger, I have been engaged in one of these seemingly innocent conversations by men (usually much much older) which I continued because I wanted to be polite and would have been told I was over reacting if I acted cold to them or told them to piss off, and even though I was reserved, terse, and just smiled and nodded most of the time, and answered questions as short as possible, these men, old enough to be my grandfather, would inevitably say something sexually perverted to me which I cannot repeat on here. One man continued to follow me after I walked away when he made such a remark, and only stopped when he realized what appeared to be an alley between two buildings, actually opened into a large courtyard with many people.

There are many good men in the world, and by far, the majority of men I have dealt with are good men, but there are still enough bad men in the world that most woman will run into at least one in her lifetime, and naive seeming blond 15-20 year old girls tend to attract them like magnets.

After a number of such experiences, I started to examine these men and these conversations and identified common traits that both the men, and the nature of the conversations had.

This is probably another reason most NT women have strong non-verbal intuition....I had to come by it analytically.

Thanks for the explanation, since I am here, I did not really tried to understand what kind of differences there might be between aspie men and woman. Of course I know we have only logic left, but I naively thought that women all kept a more defensive posture by default, just because they were woman, just because they were more used to refuse proposals. I was wrong

This conversational sidestep was the red flag and I'm glad you caught it.

Knowing the right time to be rude/not polite is a life skill, in that it can save your life. It is also remarkably difficult to actively teach. My mother did not actively teach it to me but I learned it by passively watching her and noticing what situations with strangers made her put on her "suspicious" face and start acting differently. By the time I was in highschool I had seen this enough times to get myself out of some potentially bad situations.

Unsurprisingly, this passive watching of mom's non-verbal signals is not working to teach my daughter (age 12). She is just flat out baffled by some situations she has witnessed in my interactions with strangers. Usually I am polite. Sometimes I am apparently rude and she can't tell why. So I am trying to teach her the red flags but they are really subtle. All she sees (apparently) is that I have told her to be polite and also now I'm telling her not to be polite. It's a mixed message that is deeply confusing her right now.

So I have a question as an NT parent. Can you think of a way I can explain these situations without it seeming like I am telling her to be both polite and be rude? She is snagged on that conflict and I need to help her past it for her future safety.

I'd call this meeting something with the right type and force of energy.

This can be difficult. When I was 12 I wasn't really all that naive...I just looked it by default. It also helped that I was in a class full of boys with ADHD who constantly liked to bother people for the sake of bothering them, and didn't know when to stop unless you really drove home the point to stop, so my BS fuse was short.

I guess I just had a lot of learning by experience.

Here is what I would tell her. If a strange man approaches her and begins to talk to her and it's not a police man or anyone who has any valid business talking to her, she should walk away. If someone approaches her who makes her feel uncomfortable, she should walk away. If someone like a sales person or solicitor is bothering her, she should politely decline them. If they continue to bother her,they are the one's being rude, and she is perfectly in her right to be rude back by telling her "I said I'm not interested" and walking away even if they are still trying to talk to her.

Thank you. I will talk about that with her.