the clompster
last night, after grabbing a couple of beers with a friend, i went home and dove into my sweet, sweet bed for some sweet, sweet sleep. much-needed sleep, as school requires me to wake up at 6:45 every day, work for eight hours straight, and get home at 5. so, the sleep. i like it. it helps with the animals in churches reporting.
but horror: at 4 a.m., ominous clomping started resonating throughout my apartment. i knew right away what it was - my upstairs neighbor, trodding around. i'd heard him/her many times before. i don't begrudge them walking around - our floors are squeaky, and you have to get from the bathroom to the kitchen to the bedroom and back somehow, after all. i'm not expecting noiseless creepy ghost gliding.
but at 4 a.m. on a friday morning? AND FOR TWO HOURS STRAIGHT? i swear to god, it was like my neighbor had put on a pair of 20 lb. hiking boots and trod a rut in their floor. i tried everything to block it out. i put on the fan to create some white noise even though it was like 40 degrees out; i put in my shitty $1 earplugs from the 9:30 club. nothing worked. i even, and oh my god, i sound like an 85-year-old crank, took my broom out of the closet and banged it repeatedly on the ceiling. NOTHING.
what the fuck could they possibly have been doing? why are you clomping around at 4 a.m.? why are you wearing enormous clompy shoes while you do it? why do you hate me? why did you run down the apartment stairs at 5 a.m., leading me to believe you'd gone off to do your clomping on a street corner, only to come back 15 minutes later?
what's my recourse here for dealing with this kind of situation? do i leave a passive-aggressive note in my neighbor's mailbox if it happens again? do i storm up the stairs in my pjs and zit cream to berate them? or do i seethe silently until i can't contain it anymore and go beat them senseless with my broom?
Comments
You go up there one night with a jar of talcum powder and a portable fan. You put the talcum just in front of the bottom of the door, then turn the fan on.
If there's a large enough crack under the front door, you can also get some snake some tubing in there and drip used cooking oil or paint through a funnel.
Another good trick would be to crazy glue the lock on their door.
My serious advice is to try to tell them that the noise is bothersome, and also to get better earplugs.
Now, when I was living in Chicago, I also had an unbelievably loud upstairs neighbor, and it went something like this: at first, go upstairs, knock, ask him to keep it down. Doesn't work. Go upstairs, tell him to keep it down in my "annoyed voice." Doesn't work. Call the cops. Doesn't work. Go up, vigorously kick on his door, and dare him to get his ass in the hall. Doesn't work. Eventually, I moved out for other reasons. Though not before (I'll deny this if the Feds come calling), putting in a request with the post office to forward his mail to Hawaii.
Sometimes, nothing works.
I suggest taking the coward's way out: talk to the landlord. Who knows, there might be previous complaints about this guy.
Here's a review of earplugs.
Go upstairs and knock on the door.
Contain your pissed-offness and politely inform
them that to you downstairs it sounds like
elephants dancing on the ceiling and could
they please try not to clump around.
Give them one chance - be polite - do not be
subservient.
If that doesn't work - go to the landlord.
If that doesn't work... other options come to
mind but I can't advise them
How do you all wake up in the morning when you wear earplugs to bed? I've found that any earplugs that block out enough neighbor noise also block out my alarm clock. I know there are vibrating alarm clocks you can put under your pillow but I toss and turn and I probably wouldn't be in range by morning. Is there a solution I'm overlooking?
My etymotics (and presumably other earplug-style headphones) make pretty good earplugs. If you could figure a way to avoid getting tangled in the cord, using an mp3 player's alarm function might be an option.
i don't normally wear earplugs to bed - i just remembered, in my psychotic bleariness at 4:30 a.m., that i had some in a jacket pocket from a past concert. not that they did much good. so anyway, my alarm usually wakes me up just fine, but i'm a pretty light sleeper.
thanks for all the advice. i think i'll wait a little bit to see what happens; i've lived there for almost a month now and this is the first time the noise has been that bad. maybe it was just a one off thing. if not though, he'll be feeling the broom marks for weeks...
How do you guys all wear earplugs in the first place? I don't think there's anything more uncomfortable.
My upstairs neighbor on U Street, the guy who preceded Erik and Cupcake, would crash through his apartment at all hours of the night. It turns out that the reason for all that racket was speed and male prostitution. So if you're lucky, your upstairs neighbor won't pay any rent and the guy will move out on his own.
How do you all wake up in the morning when you wear earplugs to bed?
I think the simple answer is to get a loud alarm, or a radio alarm clock that you can crank the volume on.
Yes, they're uncomfortable at first, but you get used to them, and sleep so much better if noise is an issue.
1. Pound ceiling.
2. Knock on his/her door at 4 AM.
3. If he/she doesn't answer, repeat #2 as needed.
4. Call landlord/cops if he/she never answers the door. Investigate local nighttime noise level ordinances.
5. If you eventually make your entrance, hide one of these in his/her apartment (a centrally located drawer or behind the TV works well).
Clomping around hardly merits a phone to the landlord or the police unless accompanied by a loud stereo or screaming.
Get a much louder fan and/or use a sleep aid. Then when you are sure your neighbor is sleeping, say at 9:00am or so...play Das Ring des Nibelungen as loud as you can, sing along even. And add some of that broom banging. And maybe throw in a moan or two. Do you own an airhorn?
Buy a stereo with large speakers. Put speakers on a high shelf and point upwards toward ceiling. Blast Iron Maiden (or your music of choice) as soon as you hear the clomping. This accomplishes two things:
1. The soundwaves bounce of the ceiling (which serves as an amplifier for their stomping), thus cancelling the stomping out so you can't hear it.
2. You get revenge by turning the tables on them, so that THEY are the ones inconvenienced by noise.
I do this all the time. I'd prefer peace and quiet, of course. But if I have to choose between the homogenous roar of heavy metal or the random, erratic stomping that makes you jump out of your skin every time you hear it, I'll go with the loud music.
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