Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep *snooze* Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep *snooze* Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep BeepBeep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep *snooze* Beep..

Apparently I’m a problem. Or at least my alarm clock is. See, last christmas, I got a new alarm clock, because my old one’s alarm was too quiet and I wasn’t waking up (I couldn’t decide whether I was just getting used to the sound, or if it was just failing). The new one had two modes, radio and buzzer. I preferred the buzzer, but sadly the volume control wouldn’t work with it, it had only one volume: very high. Since that time I had been using it fine. At first it woke me up all the time, but now I’m getting used to it as well, and sometimes can sleep through it for quite a while. Other times, I hit the snooze in my sleep, so it will cycle until I finally wake up enough to remember doing it.

For years I had lived in this apartment and never really had a problem with other people’s noise. Well, sometimes people in the hallway could get rowdy, and I found the door to be particularly bad at insulating noise, but all the rest seemed fine. Even other people’s smoke detectors sounded like little bleeps in the distance.

However, early this week I came home to a message from my machine from the management about my alarmclock. Apparently several people had complained, that it was going off all day and such, waking people up, and he was reminding me about the problem. Now, I knew it couldn’t be going off all day, it has a 2 hour limiter. I think once or twice I had left it on by accident when I left the apartment really early, but I was still surprised that the sound was carrying. And since this was the first time I had heard about this in the 6 months I had the clock, so I could only have been minded of it.

When I spoke to him directly, it got weirder. Apparently he himself could hear it in his apartment in the mornings, and his place is 2 apartments along the hallway. The sound was carrying that far. And during my rebuttal in the meeting (despite my best efforts, I was starting to get defensive) he said people who complained could be (as he didn’t want to name names) across the hallway, or even apparently on different floors. What an amazing alarm clock, it can wake people up on different floors, but still not me apparently. One bit of the exchange was that someone said they could hear in their bathroom.. I responded “So they’re already awake… yes?”, okay, I wasn’t being very helpful there, but I was getting defensive. I can hear people’s shower water hitting tub in the bathroom too, and the whistle of the pipes, should I be complaining about that?

I decided to speak directly to the people to the left and right of my apartment in the hallway (on the same side). Both of them said that yeah, they did hear the alarm, but never seemed to care about it and said they weren’t the ones who complained. This might have been just them trying to avoid a confrontation, but if it’s true, that means that people further away had an even greater objection to the noise. The powers of this alarm never cease, the irritation has some sort of inverse relationship to distance.

Anyway, as I’m not particularly fond of facing eviction, I decided to try using the radio mode, with it’s volume control set to a lower, hopefully non-objectionable level. I decided to write a little note out explaining that I wasn’t leaving the alarm going all the time, that I was a heavy sleeper, was unaware the noise was carrying and will use a quieter method from now on, and to let me know if problems continue. I made three copies and put them in the mail slots of the three apartments near mine by on the opposite wall of the hallway (as they weren’t home when I tried the human touch). I had already spoken to the people on my wall on the left and right. The manager’s place is the next one on the right and the hallway ends, there is another one further on the left but it was so far I couldn’t imagine it traveling that far. But the door spacing made it possible that the people involved were the three across the hallway, and so were candidates for the note.

I got one thank you note back, saying they appreciate my consideration, but they weren’t among those who complained. I seem to be doing well tracking down those who claim not to have been bothered. Oh well.

One thing the manager mentioned was that the people involved (wouldn’t give me numbers either, but I think it was 2) were getting so angry for so long that they were about to slip a note under my door. Shocking I know. The issue could have been resolved long ago if they had done that, or, god forbid, direct human contact. Staying silent while getting angrier and angrier isn’t really fair to me, as I couldn’t respond to a situation I didn’t know existed.

Admittedly, I didn’t know my neighbours through direct human contact at the time either, but now at least I’ve met a couple of them, if only to apologize for all the beeping.