Interviewers may tie up their telephones or occupy their doorsteps for long periods, sometimes asking questions about private matters that are not suitable subjects for public inquiry.
Hence the most satisfying thing about this autumn's calendar is news that a bunch of top curators have edited 200 years of the nation's art and are delivering it to our doorsteps for £14 a ticket.
Amazon has already spent nearly £500m on automating its warehouses and announced earlier this month – amid a lot of scepticism about the feasibility of such of a scheme – that it is developing delivery drones designed to drop a package on doorsteps for use within the next five years.
It is not just the consequences of absolute poverty in the poorest nations which tugs at our heart strings, many feel we could and should be doing more for those on our own doorsteps for whom there appears to be little hope for a decent life.
Pebble smartwatches have been hitting doorsteps for a little while now, but my colleague Darrell Etherington and I have only just been able to join the party.
But there's one service that is still stuck in brick-and-mortar land, and to be quite honest, it's shocking that it's stayed offline and off of our doorsteps for so long: Dry cleaning.
