I Work America’s Most Hated Job. I Have No Regrets.

In What It’s Like, people tell us about experiences you’ve probably never considered. This time, we spoke to a process server. It’s their job to deliver important legal documents in person, meaning they’re the people tasked with bearing the often-unpleasant news that someone is being sued or is otherwise due in court. Whether they’re serving a character on a sitcom or a starlet in real life, process servers rank right up there with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the cliché pantheon of people you don’t want knocking on your door. In this entry, Matthew White, a 32-year-old process server based in Chicago, shares his experience working in this most reviled of professions.

Most of the time, people are not happy to see me. I had a lady come to the door about two weeks ago. She pulled out a gun and she said, “Why are you at my house at 1 o’clock in the morning?” I said, “Well, ma’am, I came out several times during normal business hours. Nobody was home. How am I supposed to know when you’re home?”

People know not to open the door when they see a uniform, but then when they see a random guy, that really throws them off. I wear blue jeans and a T-shirt. And then once you open the door, you’re done. People are expecting a Cook County sheriff or a local officer to serve them. They don’t know that a regular person—as long as they’re employed by a detective agency in the state of Illinois—can serve a summons. Every state is different.

I get a lot of my work through lawyers and property management companies. People find me through recommendations and referrals. I’ve had a couple of clients from TikTok, where I post videos from work. Sometimes I’m appointed by the court. I’ve had landlords call me telling me that they want to serve five-day notices and 30-day notices. I’ve had people call me because the father of their child is not paying child support.

I did armed security for a long time. It didn’t pay a whole lot of money. Before that, I used to write parking tickets. That really wasn’t the best job. So when I discovered process serving, I was able to work it around my schedule, because I was in college at the time. ​​Nobody taught me how to do it. I just kind of picked it up. Quickly, I learned that if you’re nice to people, then you’ll get a better response. If you’re mean to people, then you’re gonna get a negative response. Normally, I don’t have to do too much. I just ring the doorbell and say, “Hi, I have a delivery for whoever,” and they buzz you in. Now technically, you’re not lying, because you do have a delivery. But you cannot say that you’re any part of law enforcement. You can’t say you’re the fire department. You can’t say anything of that nature. But if you say I have a delivery for this person, almost nine times out of 10, you get buzzed in. Then you hit them with, “Here you go. This is your delivery. You have a summon. You have to go to court.”

Of course, you’re not going to get everybody to open the door. There are a lot of times where you go to someone’s house four or five times, and you don’t make any contact. You don’t have to give a summons to them personally. You can post it on the door, but judges like to see that you tried numerous times to get in contact with them. They want to see notes like, “Knocked on the door, there was no answer,” “I heard a child hollering or playing,” “I saw that there was a television on,” “I saw a female resident walking through the living room.” Stuff like that shows that they’re avoiding service. The other night, there was a guy who said, “I’m not that person, and I’m not going to accept that.” I’m like, “Well sir, I’ve already made contact with you, and on the summons, it says this person’s name and all unknown occupants.”

Every county is different. In Cook County, if you make contact with them, all you need is a physical description of what the person looks like. Because of COVID-19, we had a lot of relaxed laws and regulations as far as service of process. We had the six-foot rule. Like if I could see you and you don’t want to take it from my hand, I could drop it at your feet. A lot of agencies do it, a lot don’t.

I’m not a bounty hunter. I don’t go looking for people. It’s not like Pineapple Express—that movie is overexaggerated. Nobody dresses up. I’ve never seen anybody dress up as a pizza man. I’ve never seen anybody wear a costume to go serve someone. No one’s, like, running from me. The lawyers just give me people’s work addresses. Sometimes I serve them there. After I make four or five different attempts with no contact, then I’m done. It just goes to court and we say we can’t serve them. Then eventually we can serve them by posting on their door.

I get in a bad mood sometimes when people don’t open the door because then I feel like I’m wasting my time. Some days I’ll go out to 20 houses and nobody will open the door. And some days I’ll go out to 20 houses and then everybody opens the door. It all depends on the day.

If you’re lazy, you can make $30- or $40,000 a year. I work seven days a week. If you work every day like I do, and you don’t slack, you can pull in easily 100 grand. Last year, I pulled a little under 100 grand. The year before, I pulled 115. You are an independent contractor, so there’s no long-term stability. But if you want quick, easy money, process serving is the way to go. I mean, I’ve been doing it for 10 years. I paid my way through college. I have no student loan debt. I see a lot of men in this job, but I know a lot of females who do it too. One of my colleagues, she was in the army for like eight years, and she’s a fantastic process server.

I started my TikTok account during COVID. I had nothing to do. Because I went viral, I did get fired by quite a few of my clients. I kind of got into a little rut for a minute. Then I started to get some clients through it. I’ve had a couple of lawyers tell me, “Hey, me and my kids, we follow you.”

This work is not easy. People spit on me. People call me names. People cuss me out. I’ve had people push me. I’ve had people punch me. I’ve had people mace me. I’ve had people pull guns on me. I had one person wrap a dog leash around my neck and I was thrown down a flight of stairs. That one was for a debt collection. They were pissed off because I served their grandmother. I have that 911 call on record. I have hearing aids, and I was able to call 911 from them. That case is currently in litigation. I plan on putting it on my TikTok within the next six months.

You have to stay cool. If you match a person with the same level that they’re coming at you with, then it’s probably going to be three times worse versus if you stay calm and you talk to them. You say, “Look, I understand your frustration. Unfortunately, I’m just a messenger. You need to go to court. You need to handle your business.” If you look at the video on my TikTok where you see someone mace me in the face, I kept talking. I said, “You gotta go to court on this date, this time.” I was foaming at the mouth. I was coughing. It was terrible. When it happened, the woman who hired me for that job said, “Only Matthew White.” This would only happen to me.

If you’re easily offended, overly emotional, or insecure, then you probably shouldn’t be a process server. For example, I know some process servers who don’t serve process without a gun. And I tell them, “Why are you carrying a gun?” I’m like, “Look, dude, all you’re doing is knocking on the door, handing them a piece of paper, walking away. You’re not placing anybody under arrest.” There’s no reason to be acting that way. If you can’t deliver a document without carrying a gun, then you probably should not be serving process.

I do wear a camera and videotape all my encounters, though. If something happens, I get it on tape. It definitely helps. It keeps me safe legally, and if there’s any question about whether or not I did something right, the judge has the option to view the video. I have seen other servers who wear cameras, but not all of them. There’s a lot of companies that feel that it’s a liability.

You meet a lot of people doing this job. I’ve met celebrities. I served the rapper Chief Keef. I’ve met two of my ex-partners. Most people aren’t happy to see me. But I did have a lady take a picture with me once. She was like, “I’m so glad you came because now I can finally divorce my husband.”