The neighbor's annoying alarm clock

Hypatia

Actually, I don't really know if it's an alarm clock radio or a television.

Essentially: I live in an apartment and for the past 3 weeks now I've been woken up at varying times in the morning (between 6-7:30am) by the sound of either a radio or a television program being blared very loudly and audible through the wall. Sometimes it only goes on for a short time, but on Saturday mornings it will start at around 7:30am and go for 30 minutes-2 hours.

I've tried moving my bed to the other side of the room, but my apartment just ain't that big and it hasn't helped. It's like having an alarm go off in the morning that you can't shut off.

My question is, what should my next step be? I don't want to be a bitchy neighbor (and because of the weird floor plans in my apartment building I'm not even sure of which apartment shares that wall with me) but this is driving me absolutely berserk since it goes off before my alarm most of the time and I can't sleep through it.

I've been thinking about this and feel like my options are:

A) Try to track down a floor plan and figure out what apartment it is. Write a note or knock on the person's door and explain the situation and ask if he/she can turn the alarm down, move it away from the wall, or otherwise do something about it.

Contact the manager and ask if he can ask the resident to turn it down, move it away from the wall, or otherwise do something about it.

C) Wear earplugs (I tried that this morning but it's pretty uncomfortable trying to fall back asleep)

D) Spend $50 and buy a white noise machine and hope that it drowns out the sound

The volume is loud enough that if I concentrate I can understand/hear what the radio/television is saying from the other apartment so I can tell that it's either a talk show or a news program.

Anyone have suggestions? Other options? Ideas?

Richard_Dastardly

Option A is the best bet at first. Unless you're positive the dude is a douche, give him the benefit of the doubt in regards to him/her not knowing the alarm is too loud.

Of course, you shouldn't have to be bothered to track the dude down if you don't know what apartment the noise is coming from. Explaining the situation to your manager wouldn't be a bad option.

GungHo

A then B. If neither works, file a noise complaint with the po-po.

EggyToast

If it were me, I'd bang on the wall each morning. If that didn't help, I'd track down the manager and tell them. Banging on the wall tells the person "hey, there is another person here, and I can hear what you're doing." A lot of people in apartments forget that they live around other people.

Worst case scenario, they ignore you, in which case you simply talk to the manager. Best case, they stop or turn it down or move it.

I've had to do this for a very loud upstairs neighbor. They had kids and they'd play basketball or something upstairs (which baffled us, because a) it's obviously very loud and b) it didn't sound like they owned any furniture). We'd grab a broomhandle and "boomph boomph boomph" the ceiling, and then we'd hear the (loud) mom yell "STOP BOUNCING THAT DAMN BALL!"

Of course, she'd also wake her kids up for school by yelling "GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED IT'S TIME FOR SCHOOL" at 6:45 every morning, often culminating in her stomping into the room and literally dragging the kid out of bed, thumping his body on the floor. Of course, this was directly above our bedroom. One night they were putting together bunkbeds at 2am, we thumped the ceiling, and they actually came down to talk to us -- "Sorry about being so loud, we're putting bunkbeds together for our boys, it'll only be a few more minutes."

They moved out a few months later, but it was the nail in the coffin for apartment living for my wife and I.

bowen

I know how you feel. Same thing happened to me with our upstairs neighbors. I'm so thankful for the new ones that moved in and the next stop is a small house for us.

Deathwing

If you can figure out where the noise is coming from, do A then B if necessary, or start with B if you can't nail down the location. Get a copy of your local noise ordinances and file a complaint with the police if necessary if you don't get anywhere with the first 2 options. Tell the management you had to call the police, and rinse and repeat as necessary.

I can definitely sympathize - my wife and I went through my last year of college living below a spoiled brat with self-control issues (and who was a huge pot smoker and militant vegetarian, but that's for another thread)....He thought nothing of (for example) blaring music with his bass set to infinity+1 and basically holding a dance party at 10 PM on a Sunday.

We complained to him politely the first time, he turned it down without protest. Next time, he gets surly and also kicks out his dancing partners....Mentioned it to the management several times and got basically "sucks to be you, work it out yourselves". 3rd time was the charm, we barely opened our door before he was out in the hall screaming at us to leave him alone.

From there on we just called the police every time he went into violation, and eventually finished in an incident where the music went for about 6 hours straight, complete with him and his buddies literally slamming each other on the floor - I have to say the look on the officer's face when he heard the racket was amusing at least

About a month after that, the management mysteriously made a sudden decision to be more helpful, and the skinny little bastard suddenly discovered a pressing need to live elsewhere, so i'm not sure if the police made some comments on our behalf or what....Despite the fact that we're in a much nicer place now, I have to say that the whole mess has pretty much sealed our decision to move into a house sooner rather than later....Don't ever want to go through that kind of stress again.

Sentry

Why does A have to be a note and not a face to face conversation? Notes tend to be passive-aggressive...

Gilbert0

I agree with Sentry. Too much is done through writing (email, text msg, whatever). A simple face to face conversation, shows that your a person not just some writing on a page.

I know it doesn't help you but I'm soooo glad I live in a concrete apartment (can't hear anyone).

TexiKen

What might be happening is that the TV the guy has is touching the back wall, and that really spreads the sound around. My old roommate had the TV in his room pushed to the wall, and anything above a certain level just spread throughout the apartment. One it was moved, no a problem.

Robos A Go Go

You could try going to sleep with the earplugs in rather than simply putting them on when you've been woken up.

desperaterobots

I recently moved into a house on a main road and was being woken up by trucks and cars at 6am.

So I just turned my fan on medium for some white noise. Worked well. I rarely get woken up now. Might want to consider this.

Arrath

When this happened to me I moved the aquarium from the main room to my bedroom. Sound of the pump drowned it out nicely.

TeeMan

Absolutely do A.

At my work we live in "Dongas", which is a small room with an attached ensuite. I've been in the same one for over a year now, but contractors usually live in the ones on either side of mine, so it's difficult to know when they're there and when they're not. Usually you can tell if the light is on, TV is on etc, that someone is there, but I've been caught out a few times by hearing them slam the door in the morning after I've been playing music DVDs far too loudly when I thought no one was there.

It makes me feel bloody terrible. I wouldn't want anyone to put me through it and I don't want to put anyone through it. If they only knocked on my door and asked me to turn the volume down, I would have gladly done so and apologised, but instead now I feel like a jackass and they're always angry.

Find out who they are, explain the suitation, and hopefully theres a win for both parties

Hypatia

Thank you for the suggestions! I'm going to call the manager and ask him for an idea of what apartment shares that wall with me, then I'll try knocking on the door. I just mentioned the note because I've noticed that some of the neighbors keep some odd hours/schedules and it can be hard to see them. I'll fall back on that only if the knocking doesn't work.

Hypatia

Just wanted to let people know, I wrote the manager to get the number of the apartment that's causing the problem and he jumped in and said he'd talk to them for me and wouldn't give me the number. This Saturday I wasn't woken up by it going for an hour and a half so I guess the problem's fixed, yay!

Precious precious sleep, I love you so!