agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Amy: Until recently, my neighbor “Ron” and I always got along very well.

Ron works from home, and I am retired. I enjoy working in my garage, house or yard during the day, usually between 11 and 5 p.m. While working in the garage, I will listen to music, and sometimes it can be a little loud because of the tools I am using.

Recently Ron posted on Facebook a profanity-laced post about my loud music, saying that it interferes with his job. Basically, he made me out to be an inconsiderate jerk, which is the farthest thing from the truth. All he or his wife had to do was to let me know it was an issue, and I would have turned it down, no problem.

When my wife talked to them about the situation, first they denied that they were referring to me, blaming it on the neighbors across the street. (Not true.) Then they tried to turn it around, blaming my wife for telling me about the FB post. My wife eventually got a half-hearted apology, which she said should be directed toward me.

They said they would apologize when they saw me. The next day they “unfriended” my wife on Facebook and haven't spoken to us since. Did we do something wrong? We always try to be the best neighbors possible, and don't understand what we did.

– Upset

Dear Upset: You did do something wrong, but your neighbors’ rude and public reaction has far overshadowed your own behavior.

The thing you did wrong was when you failed to imagine that your loud music during workdays might disturb your neighbor, whom you know works from home.

Now, onto your neighbors. They are demonstrating the very reason that I am no longer active on Facebook: I couldn’t handle witnessing how poorly some people I know personally (and many people I don’t know) were behaving toward one another.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Nextdoor.com can become toxic cesspools where people rudely and provocatively vent – drawing others into the fray (in the comments section). People write things they wouldn’t dream of saying out loud, using social media to settle scores. Then, if things go badly, they can conveniently hide behind the “block” and “unfriend” buttons.

And – just as your neighbor has taken the cowardly path – why, I wonder, is your wife crossing the yard to try to talk this out? She wasn’t blasting Led Zeppelin in the garage … you were!

If you don’t receive an apology from your obnoxious neighbor and want to demonstrate a more sophisticated way of behaving, you might close the circle if you acknowledge that you’re sorry this episode has created tension between you. You could add: “In the future, I hope that we can restore our neighborly connection and talk things out personally and respectfully when there is a problem.”

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/askamy/s-2836674?fs

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"Did we do something wrong?" Yeah, I'll say you did, buddy - you played your music for seven hours a day, every day, until your neighbor finally snapped. "All he had to do is let me know it was an issue!" Yes, well, all you had to do is ask yourself - "Is this possibly an issue for anybody else? I wonder if I ought to use headphones."

Neighbor didn't exactly act well here, but LW, don't pretend you don't have any responsibility for this situation.

What do you think the chances are that the neighbor DID try saying something too? I'm sure at one point there was a "Wow, that was some music you were listening to earlier - I had the windows and office door closed and I could still hear it like it was in the room with me!" that went right over his head.

Oh, it's gotta be at least even odds.

Sorry, my sympathies are with the neighbor. I have to deal with people playing loud music all the time, and you bet your bippy I have lost my temper on FB or DW or somewhere else. It should be a given that you do not inflict your music on other people without their permission.

At least once a week in the summer I grumble that I ought to call the non-emergency line for a noise complaint against my neighbors and if they were routinely making this sort of noise for seven hours a day, not just on the weekends either, I might actually consider going ahead and doing it!

We had a neighbor running a sub-woofer installation business right across the street, out of his driveway. He was under house arrest at the time. It was a tense summer for the whole street.

At my old house, I had multiple neighbours who would play loud music in their backyards until 3am - so loudly that even with all the doors and windows closed I could hear them at the opposite end of the house

I rang the noise complaint line so many times...

Sometimes when I rang the noise complaint line I truthfully said "my windows are literally vibrating from the noise" (because my windows WERE vibrating from the noise)

Loud music PLUS power tools with the garage door wide open. What an asshole.

Tools with the garage door open is one thing - depending on the kind of work he's doing he might need the ventilation, plus I doubt that's running for a consistent 6-7 hours. Music is another because that is 100% something he does not need to listen to without headphones, plus I'm guessing he turns up the volume while he's doing something loud for 2 minutes and then "forgets" to turn it down. Super frustrating and not very neighborly

I don't think it says the garage door is open when he's working with his tools - or even that they're power tools.

I think it's very likely that both those things are accurate statements, and also that the music is *always* loud because if LW is retired, it's very likely his hearing is starting to go (especially if he frequently plays loud music or operates power tools without any sort of hearing protection) but it's not in the letter.

Ron the neighbor should have been direct, and he definitely should have checked who could see that Facebook post.

The letter writer should have known that daily loud music and power tools would be annoying to others. Ron didn't "make him out to be" anything -- he is an inconsiderate jerk.

I don't know whether the letter writer sent his wife over to demand an apology from the neighbor, or whether the wife did that under her own steam, but (1) the letter writer should have gone over himself, and (2) the apology should be going in the other direction.

"Did we do something wrong? We always try to be the best neighbors possible, and don't understand what we did."

There is no "we" doing things wrong here. All your wife did was marry you.

You think Ron didn't know these people would see that Facebook post? Nah, Ron just didn't expect them to confront them over it. He ought to have - inconsiderate jerks always do.

I get if they had felt embarrassed and upset because they thought the neighbors liked them too, but why on earth would they not just immediately stop the noise? Given that the post was hostile in tone, I get not wanting to apologize for the past nuisance, which he really owes them, but in that case why not go along with the face-saving strategy of pretending that the communication never happened?

Because LW really wants to frame it that the neighbor is more in the wrong.

The most I'll give him is that they both could've acted a bit better.

I work from home and yet my sympathies are with LW.

I do doubt that Ron ever said anything to LW. People mostly don't, these days. It can be stressful to ask a neighbor to quiet down but it's still the right thing to do. If you're shy or have another reason you can't ask directly, than leave a note or DM on facebook.

I say this as someone who has small-scale lost my shit at neighbors for behavior I perceive as unneighborly or inconsiderate, and I have almost always been in the wrong in a way that embarrasses me for years.

Passive aggressive social media ranting helps nobody, and didn't even help Ron let off steam, because he was clearly humiliated and angry at being called on the rant. Just ask, Ron. LW is retired and probably doesn't even remember that people are working in earshot.

(Also, there is always noise making it hard to WFH. Construction, weird music, kids screaming in the playground all summer... WFH is great but houses aren't soundproofed as well as office buildings. Seriously, Ron, ask, and also just find the "12 hours of white noise" youtube channels.)

Same, and like all of the other commenters on here, my knee jerk is "yeah, being loud every day between 11am and 5pm with both power tools and music is inconsiderate."

11am and 5pm are outside of typical neighborhood "quiet" hours. Does it suck for the neighbors? Oh yes. It completely sucks. I have a power tool neighbour, as well as a neighbour whose dog gets put outside to bark at the world. I also know this because I work from home (it would have no impact on my life if I didn't - I'd have no clue!). It's totally irritating, and when it's intruding on my work, I use noice canceling headphones with a noice canceling microphone. It hasn't impacted my colleagues over the phone/video, though it does put a dent in my ability to work some days.

Yes, neighbour should be considerate and use their own headphones or check in with Ron proactively to ensure the power tools/music aren't an issue...but at the end of the day, the only control Ron has is over himself. I understand not all jobs pay a living wage, and perhaps Ron is not able to buy a nice headset, or his employer won't pay for one. Ron also had the choice to explicitly tell his neighbour, politely there was a problem. There was no need for Ron to escalate it to the "Facebook Void."

A simple "I'm working from home, and between 8am and 5pm on weekdays, I am likely to be on the phone, and I need to be able to hear other people and have other people hear me. If you could please arrange the power tools & music to occur outside of that time frame, it would be much appreciated. Thank you, neighbour!" leaves no room for ambiguity over what is being asked/needed, and costs no money.

If you're shy or have another reason you can't ask directly, than leave a note or DM on facebook

Do most people actually have contact details for their neighbours?

The only neighbour I have contact details for is the one that I share a street number with

eg they are 99

and I am 99A

Do you need contact details to just shove a note in a mailbox or a post-it on a door?

This just makes me realize how fortunate I am that my brain can tune out noises. I worked at home. My former neighbor was a contractor and worked on construction projects every weekend and sometimes during the week. His son played various amplified musical instruments. They had a dog that they would leave in the yard when they went out in the evening and he would bark and whine the entire time they were gone. Their gardener came at 7am every Saturday and blew their leaves under our bedroom window.

Also I volunteered at an animal shelter where all the dogs barked constantly, poor things.

I was able to tune it all out.

But my SO got so angry at it. He bought a bagpipe with the intention of practicing it in the yard at weird hours to get back at our neighbor. (He never did get around to it, and now I've moved and he's gone, but I still have the bagpipe.)

Playing loud music outdoors is definitely inconsiderate. I side with LW on the power tools, though. Neighborhoods have normal noises that result from home, lawn, and street maintenance, and although its sucks sometimes, I think WFH people just have to cope with them.

And passive-aggressive Facebook posts are never the right way to go.

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