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 They are demonstrating the very reason that I am no longer active on Facebook: I couldn’t handle witnessing how poorly some people I know personally (and many people I don’t know) were behaving toward one another.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