I have always been more of a night owl than a daytime person, which is ironic because I definitely prefer sunrise over sunset. My natural circadian rhythm seems to be sleep hours of 3 AM to 11 AM. Or at least it was before my total hysterectomy and occasional insomnia, which is worse when I am unemployed.
Back in 1999, I worked third shift at a Rutter’s store, a convenience store chain based in York, Pennsylvania. I was only in the deli—I wanted nothing to do with counting change, or cashier transactions in general. I only worked 10 PM to 6 AM Friday and Saturday nights, then eventually became full-time, adding 2 PM to 10 PM shifts on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It was a terrible schedule: I really only had off on Thursdays and Sunday afternoons and evenings.
There were times when I wanted to be awake during the day, so I would stay up after getting off work Sunday morning and eventually crash in the afternoon or evening. It was never a fun experience, often making me irritable from lack of sleep, but once I was on a nighttime sleeping schedule, I felt there was so much more time to get things done. Then I would be forced to go back to sleeping during the day before my next overnight shift.
For years I struggled to sleep at night, more so after my year and a half at Rutter’s. When I was promoted to manager at Mount Hope Estate and Winery, I finally had a somewhat normal schedule: I clocked in to work at 7:30 AM and usually clocked out just before 7:00 PM, unless it was an event day when I had to stay later.
When I became manager at Joann, I had to work one night a week and one mid-shift, so I almost always worked Wednesday night to change the sale signs, took off on Thursday, and worked 10 AM to 7 PM on Saturdays, when the store was busiest. Those mid-shifts on Saturdays were my favorite: I didn’t have to get up early, didn’t have to open the store, and didn’t have to clean up at the end of the night. I often said I got to sleep in, go in and make a mess, then go home. One of my supervisors would give me a nasty look when I said this, but she knew I would always do what I could to make closing easier on Saturday nights.
When I last worked at Michaels, I was almost always the weekday morning cashier, leaving at 1 PM. Initially, I would offer to stay later, but I was never appreciated, so I gave up and went home, unless the operations manager or framing manager asked me to stay. They both seemed to acknowledge I had skills far beyond just being a cashier and, unlike the store manager, did not give preferential treatment to pretty young girls. I’m in my forties and was never a “pretty little girl.”
Since I have been unemployed over the past many months—a time that feels like a decade by now—I have had days when I can’t sleep at night and days when I’m up early. If I’m writing, I sometimes don’t realize how late it is getting. I’ll be so focused on my creativity and then suddenly notice it’s 4 AM. Time just flies when I’m in the zone.
My husband has had this same struggle since being off work due to his injury. Not so much because of writing, but because we live next door to the most inconsiderate asshole in existence. Or at least one of them. The jerk put his theater system on the shared wall in the master bedroom, so we get the vibrations of whatever he is watching, and there were weeks when he had it on ALL NIGHT. One might ask, “why put a theater system in the bedroom and not the living room?” Believe me, we wonder the same thing. Our big TV is in our living room, along with our Sony theater system…like normal people.
I started a log around Thanksgiving to keep track of the noise from the asshole next door. We had been dealing with this on and off for two years—I suspect he received a theater system for Christmas in 2020, because that is when it started. Just before this past Thanksgiving, he started playing it all night, keeping us awake, and then it would start again in the morning and go all day, forcing me out of my home office and postponing the release of my latest book.
In the past, we complained to the rental complex and issues were resolved. Not with this asshole, who immediately denied it. We were told they needed police reports to prove it, so on November 25, Black Friday, I called the police. They of course could barely hear anything—it wasn’t so much volume as rumblings and vibrations in our bedroom. And since my husband had to work the next day—a busy Saturday for retail—I did not invite the police officers into the bedroom to hear and feel what we were experiencing.
I pleaded with the landlord to do something as we were really suffering, both mentally and physically. My husband and I started arguing over it, and we have rarely argued in the seven years we’ve been together. There were even a couple nights when my mom insisted we sleep in her bed, which is on the third floor and does not share a wall with either neighbor. This was before my husband was injured at work, so he needed a good night’s sleep. The first night she was staying with her boyfriend. I couldn’t sleep in her room, so went another night without much sleep. The second time she insisted, she slept on the couch—not something an elderly woman, or anyone, should have to do just because the neighbor is an asshole.
We reached the point where we started looking at legal options, but the lawyers in Lebanon wanted money up-front, and we have none right now. I even threatened our rental complex—my husband has epilepsy and risks a seizure if he cannot sleep, and my anxiety and depression were getting much worse because of our neighbor torturing us with sleep deprivation. I threatened that if anything were to happen to either of us as a result of this ongoing issue, we would hold them responsible. I felt it was fair considering tenant laws—it is up to them to enforce the rules, not us.
The on-site manager was frustrated that the office wasn’t doing more to help. We have lived here for just under twelve years and the man has gotten to know us during that time. We don’t complain unless something is seriously affecting us, and we take care of basic household repair on our own, unless it is something that is beyond my skill or requires too much money to fix. We know how to properly put trash in the dumpster and recycling bins, unlike several of the other tenants. We always pay our rent and utilities on time every month and are appreciative and friendly towards the maintenance staff. We mostly keep to ourselves, wanting a quiet place to live with our pets. Basically, we are the ideal tenants.
I continued keeping a log and tried numerous times to record the noise, but, as I said, it was never so much volume as it was rumblings. As I described it in my last email to our rental complex, it is like living next door to a thunderstorm. My log had a two-week gap when my mom contracted RSV and became really sick, and then my husband was injured at work. During that time, my main focus was on my family, but I didn’t forget the asshole next door.
Shortly after Christmas, it was suddenly quieter. We hoped that would be the end of it but had serious doubts. My mom happened to run into the asshole and he said he was trying to keep it down. As expected, it was short lived, and though it isn’t as often, it has been disruptive enough to affect our sleeping patterns. My husband and I both did the not-so-fun sleep shift of staying up longer so we could both get back to a nighttime sleep schedule. Unfortunately, the very next night we were unable to sleep because the asshole was watching something loud again. Even now as I write this at 2 AM, the asshole is making noise yet again.
The most frustrating part is, during this entire ordeal, we would hear nothing until we go to bed. It was almost as if the asshole was watching and waiting. For weeks it would start right around 11 PM and continue into the early morning hours. I knew this because that was when I was trying to finish writing my book. I ended up spending more time just playing video games instead of writing simply because I was too angry and exhausted to feel creative. Our rental complex always did have a lot of tenants who are disrespectful to their neighbors, but usually in the form of trash, screaming children, and terrible music during the day, not noise at night…ALL NIGHT.
No, this asshole is an entirely new level of disrespect, and I hope that someday Karma shows him that it isn’t fun to be an asshole. I won’t become the loud neighbor in retaliation. I did have one day when I really cranked my music while reconciling our accounts—a mix of Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Skyrim, and other musical scores while trying to focus over the extreme noise from the asshole. My black cat was concerned at first, never experiencing that volume level, but the music seemed to soothe him to sleep.
In the past, I tried playing Metallica, Disturbed, Rammstein, and other hard rock bands, but the asshole just turned his noise up louder. Either way, I find it much harder to focus on finances when there are lyrics involved, so if I’m listening to music then, it’s almost always instrumental. I am not one of those people who always has music playing—I prefer the quiet or the sounds of nature. I used to fall asleep to the soothing sounds of katydids, and yes, I love the sounds of cicadas in the summer.
I really wish we could just afford to move into a real house, but I am starting to doubt that will ever happen. Until then, I’ll just keep wishing that this asshole gets evicted, whether by his own girlfriend or by the rental complex. I just don’t care anymore and want quiet…and sleep.