NationStates Jolt Archive

Nothing sucks more than living in an apartment unless it's living in an apartment and being rudely woken up at 3:25 am because some asshole has no sense of 'that wasn't a good idea'.

Yep, I'm talking about every apartment dweller's favourite noise, the sound of the fire alarm.

At least my cat had been hiding in my laundry basket and not in some inaccessible place like she would normally do. She also didn't put up a struggle when it came to going into the cage. She knows what the cage means the alarm is sounding.

Standing outside wasn't so bad... at least it was mild. And we got to laugh at the rest of the morons in our building dressed in their pyjamas.

You can really hear the bloody alarm outside. I can't remember how long it lasted, but I remember thinking, 'I need go to the bathroom real bad...'

So... I'm groggy and cranky. I like my sleep... something must die...

Everyone else have unexpected wake-up call stories to share?

Last year we had some nextdoor neighbors who were real jackasses.

They'd start playing shitty music full blast at 11:30pm on a Wednesday.

They'd smoke so much weed that our entire floor would stink with the stuff. (While I normally would appreciate a free contact high, both my partner and I have to take random drug tests at our jobs, so we seriously could get fired if we breathed enough of that shit.)

One of them would fight with his girlfriend extremely loudly at all hours. I could hear pretty much everything through the wall of our bedroom. And they had insipid fights, too, so it wasn't even like listening to a good soap opera.

Finally, it got to a point where they woke me up three nights in a row. I wake up at 6:45 to go to work in the morning, and I'm fucking pissed if somebody drags me out of a dead sleep at 3:00am. So I decided that they were going to get to live on my schedule.

Every morning as I left for work, I would loudly bang on their door to wake them up. If I have to be up, fuckers, so do you. My partner leaves about an hour after me, so I told him to do the same. No sleeping in, assholes.

Every weekend day, I would lay on my bed and kick the wall loudly for an hour or so first thing in the morning (usually while reading the paper or something), to make sure they were very much awake. No sleeping in on weekends, either.

The best part was, they already had a pile of noise complaints filed against them, so the management wasn't going to believe a word of it if they tried to complain about us. :D

There's this little thing two of my friends and I have that we call each other up in the middle of the night when drunk, just to say hello - and state that you're wasted. :D That's always very unexpected but funny none the less - and since they're my friends, I'm not mad at them.

But I chased the last guy who made noise in the hallways and knocked on my door wasted in the middle of the night through the apartment building - I was seriously pissed off and I had a huge bread knife with me. http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y223/GermanNightmare/CutThroat.gif

The look on his face was priceless.

< snip >
Damn... you're an evil bitch! :eek: I'd hate to piss you off! *cowers* :)

But seriously, I don't blame you, what real shitty neighbours.

But I chased the last guy who made noise in the hallways and knocked on my door wasted in the middle of the night through the apartment building - I was seriously pissed off and I had a huge bread knife with me. http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y223/GermanNightmare/CutThroat.gif
If your expression was anything like that smiley, I'd be scared witless too. :)

Damn... you're an evil bitch! :eek: I'd hate to piss you off! *cowers* :)

But seriously, I don't blame you, what real shitty neighbours.
Wagner or Beethoven are nice on a Sunday morning, too!

As is Motörhead or such. :p
If your expression was anything like that smiley, I'd be scared witless too. :)
Quite so. http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y223/GermanNightmare/IWillGiveYouNightmares.jpg

Well, there was the usual fire drills for college, though my wife and I got really good at avoiding those. Except for the unscheduled ones, like this one:

It was probably a Friday night, though this had been known to happen on weeknights occasionally. It was around 4 a.m. and we had woken up, how shall I say this...happy ;). Within 5 minutes of finishing our romp, the damn fire alarm starts going off. Not so fun, especially since it was an 11 floor walk to get out of the dorm.

Now all we have to deal with is the jackass with a harley that decides he likes to show off his masculinity by gunning the engine anytime he leaves the parking lot.

first year of uni in halls was terrible for rude awakenings... for a start, if there was one person left in your building after a fire alarm drill, you failed and had random drills at all hours for the next couple of days. being woken up at 3am and then 6am by the alarm in mid november in freezing, rainy Wales was no fucking joke.

then there was the fact i was on the ground floor facing out into the main walkway through the halls. that really sucked ass i can tell you... drunk people would knock on all the windows they passed at 3am (including mine, of course), would occasionally vomit right under the window, would race shopping trolleys up and down, would play cricket or football, shouting loudly, in the middle of the night, would just be loud and drunk generally... some kind of disturbance of one drunken sort or another every night..... i hardly slept that year until i started getting wasted myself just so i could get to sleep :rolleyes:

then there was the budding DJ in the room above me who practiced DJing (or whatever you call it) insanely loudly usually on the days when i had to be in to work. we used to go out and throw rocks at his window. my flatmate next-door also bought a new pair of hulking great speakers just towards the end of the year when we were revising for exams... the two of them would pretty much have loudness competitions, both with equally shitty, crap music.


i hated living there.

My Dad likes to wake my brother and I up in cruel ways each morning...
So this one time, he gets my guitar amp, places it beside me, turns it to MAX and strums.

So next morning, I get up, really early (before he does)... And hide his keys..

Revenge is sweet.

Am I the only one who has had to deal with 5 fire alarms going off in the space of 2 hours? I do not miss living in a dorm.

I can relate. I live on campus at uni and there is a fire alarm in every room, so whenever one is set off (apparently they can be set off very easily by something like deodorant) it triggers off an alarm for the entire building and we have to wait outside for 15 minutes for the fire brigade. Happens at least four times a year, usually more.

There was a fire alarm on my dorm, but I didn't wake up. I'm a really heavy sleeper.

It went for at least 2 minutes, and I didn't wake up, so my roommate punched me in the crotch.

I am woken almost every morning by flies buzzing against one of my windows. when I sleep I leave one window open and one closed. Somehow they're able to fly through the open one and find their way to the closed one every morning without fail. I don't know what it is about that horrible buzzing-in-vain-against-a-pane-of-glass noise that my subconcious mind doesn't like, but it never fails to wake me up.

Last year we had some nextdoor neighbors who were real jackasses. ...

LOL, kind of related.... my friends and I went to a Sci-Fi con some years back (who are we kidding, we go every year) and my friend returned to her room to sleep at 2pm because she had a migraine.

Apparently, the people in the next room were bored with the seminars, so they went back and proceeded to have EXTREMELY LOUD AND ENTHUSIASTIC SEX on the other side of the wall. This of course is annoying to someone who sees stars when there are loud noises and gets sick when the light is too strong in the throes of a migraine, so she found me, got MY key, and slept it off in my room.

Fast forward twelve hours -- we're sitting in her room drinking warm cola and eating cold pizza when she starts telling the rest of our gang (five guys) what had happened that afternoon.... all of a sudden she jumps on the bed, grabs the headboard, and starts rocking back and forth, ramming the bed into the wall, screaming, "OH! OH! OH! OH YES, BABY, YES, YES, HARDER!!!!"

I nearly spewed coke out of my nose, one of the guys was horrified and started telling her, OMG stop that, what are they going to think?! and the other guys started laughing and cheering her on.... which made me laugh harder, since they must have been hearing ALL these different voices on the other side of their wall.

After a particularly enthusiastic finish a la When Harry Met Sally, she jumped off the bed and said, "Serve the fuckers right keeping me up this afternoon."

LOL, kind of related.... my friends and I went to a Sci-Fi con some years back (who are we kidding, we go every year) and my friend returned to her room to sleep at 2pm because she had a migraine.

Apparently, the people in the next room were bored with the seminars, so they went back and proceeded to have EXTREMELY LOUD AND ENTHUSIASTIC SEX on the other side of the wall. This of course is annoying to someone who sees stars when there are loud noises and gets sick when the light is too strong in the throes of a migraine, so she found me, got MY key, and slept it off in my room.

Fast forward twelve hours -- we're sitting in her room drinking warm cola and eating cold pizza when she starts telling the rest of our gang (five guys) what had happened that afternoon.... all of a sudden she jumps on the bed, grabs the headboard, and starts rocking back and forth, ramming the bed into the wall, screaming, "OH! OH! OH! OH YES, BABY, YES, YES, HARDER!!!!"

I nearly spewed coke out of my nose, one of the guys was horrified and started telling her, OMG stop that, what are they going to think?! and the other guys started laughing and cheering her on.... which made me laugh harder, since they must have been hearing ALL these different voices on the other side of their wall.

After a particularly enthusiastic finish a la When Harry Met Sally, she jumped off the bed and said, "Serve the fuckers right keeping me up this afternoon."

:D that's excellent. The film too.

I have had the usual uni dorms fire drills, but it's only normally once a term (the official drills) unless some idiot burns their toast or something. And the two guys opposite me often had music volume competitions, so occasionally I would flood the corridor with Beethoven or some such in revenge. Nothing too drastic though, I'm far too mild-mannered.

I once had the fire alarm go off in a youth hostel I was staying at in France. That was annoying, considering we had no idea why it was off (not being fluent in French) and had only got to sleep like an hour before (it went off about 3am I think).

When I lived on campus some guy thought it would be a fun idea to see if sitting in a rolly-chair and setting off a fire extinguisher would really propel him backwards. At three am. Apparently it set off the smoke detectors. Also, I never heard how this experiment went.

Last year we had some nextdoor neighbors who were real jackasses.

They'd start playing shitty music full blast at 11:30pm on a Wednesday.

They'd smoke so much weed that our entire floor would stink with the stuff. (While I normally would appreciate a free contact high, both my partner and I have to take random drug tests at our jobs, so we seriously could get fired if we breathed enough of that shit.)

One of them would fight with his girlfriend extremely loudly at all hours. I could hear pretty much everything through the wall of our bedroom. And they had insipid fights, too, so it wasn't even like listening to a good soap opera.

Finally, it got to a point where they woke me up three nights in a row. I wake up at 6:45 to go to work in the morning, and I'm fucking pissed if somebody drags me out of a dead sleep at 3:00am. So I decided that they were going to get to live on my schedule.

Every morning as I left for work, I would loudly bang on their door to wake them up. If I have to be up, fuckers, so do you. My partner leaves about an hour after me, so I told him to do the same. No sleeping in, assholes.

Every weekend day, I would lay on my bed and kick the wall loudly for an hour or so first thing in the morning (usually while reading the paper or something), to make sure they were very much awake. No sleeping in on weekends, either.

The best part was, they already had a pile of noise complaints filed against them, so the management wasn't going to believe a word of it if they tried to complain about us. :D
Bottle, I'm sure you get this all the time, but you're fucking awesome.

Everyone else have unexpected wake-up call stories to share?

only one. and it was all CLINTON's FAULT!!!

what happened? simple. I was working the graveyard shift. so I staggered home, at 8:00 a.m. closed my windows and curtains (the room is pitch black by doing this.) and proceeded to fall asleep.

now what you don't know is that my apartment is below Punchbowl Cemetary... a military cemetary... and the date was late June.

that year, President Clinton was going to have his July 4th Speech at Punchbowl Cemetary...

late June... with the President coming... you know what that means. a 21 cannon salute during the President's visit. so they need to practice firing their cannons and to make sure everything is functioning properly... can't have a cannon not firing or exploding due to poor maintenance while the President is there...

I did mention that my Apartment was below Punchbowl Cemetary... infact, go up two blocks and climb up the side of the small volcanic caldera and you'll be at the cemetary...

so after the first salvo, I peeled myself off of my ceiling and tried valiantly to get back to sleep while every car alarm for blocks around were set off by the cannon fire.

oh and remember... 21 Gun salute... 3 guns... 7 salvos... practice... every day for the week leading up to July 4th...

Having your neighbors raided by the ATF in the middle of the night...

*sleeping soundly*
*DETONATION OF FLASHBANG NEXT DOOR*
WTF?
*look out window*

Last year, I was in the dormitories at my university (never a good start, is that?). Anyway, some jackass thought it the height of wit and humor to set off the fire alarm during finals week at 3:30 in the morning. Yeah.

So, we're all walking down the stairs, rather annoyed. The guy across the hall from me seemed especially angry: he had a 7:30 (or somewhere around there) final exam that day.

And then, the next semester, the same goddamn thing happens again during finals week. I mean, damn.

Having your neighbors raided by the ATF in the middle of the night...

*sleeping soundly*
*DETONATION OF FLASHBANG NEXT DOOR*
WTF?
*look out window*

wow... at least you got some kind of show with your wake up call...

wow... at least you got some kind of show with your wake up call...

Not exactly the kind of show you want to see.

I've had wake-up calls like that before...once I was spending the night at a friend's apartment in California. I didn't know they lived in a bad neighborhood, and during the night there was this massive raid on a nearby building complete with a shoot-out between the ATF and the peeps inside. Crazy go nuts, it was.

Everyone else have unexpected wake-up call stories to share?
Well, there was the time I was in Saudi Arabia... circa 1991. I awoke in mid-air, on my way back down to the floor of my tent. Turns out the Iraqis had just started rocketing Khafji, but were off a little on their cross-trail. We had FROG rockets hitting within a click of the bivouac.

Then there was the another time in Korea... After a hard night of drinking and flirting with the bar girls, I went back to the hotel. About 1 AM, someone was knocking on my door. Turns out my pal had given my room number to one of the girls. I sent her over to his room.

Then there was the another time in Korea... After a hard night of drinking and flirting with the bar girls, I went back to the hotel. About 1 AM, someone was knocking on my door. Turns out my pal had given my room number to one of the girls. I sent her over to his room.


He-he, had one of those wake up calls before. However wasn't in Korea and wasn't a bar girl. Was a very drunk gal that was lost and looking for her friends apartment. She had just walked into ours at about 3am thinking it was her friends place. Turns out she was one floor off. My roommate use to leave the door unlocked all the time. Used to make me mad. That is how she came into our apartment unannounced and she came into my room and woke me up by getting into bed. I was surprised to say the least. By the way the girl was damn hot and I am thinking that I am dreaming or something. Finally I realised that I was awake and this girl had no idea she was so drunk she didn't realise what was going on. So I politely told her to get up that she was in the wrong room. So I sent her into my roommate's room. At first I didn't hear anything. I thought oh this is going to be funny in the morning. Then I heard my roommate jump up and yell. The girl came running out of the room followed by my roommate. Was damn funny and I believe I cured him of leaving the front door unlocked. We had the girl wait on the couch while we both went and looked for her friend. We figured out where she was supposed to be and got her on her way.

My Dad likes to wake my brother and I up in cruel ways each morning...
So this one time, he gets my guitar amp, places it beside me, turns it to MAX and strums.

So next morning, I get up, really early (before he does)... And hide his keys..

Revenge is sweet.

Ugh, my dad starts playing the piano and my guitar not three feet from where I sleep (the piano's right by my bedplace). I don't think he actually realises what he's doing... In fact, I think that he doesn't pay any mind to anybody else whatsoever, at least in that sense.

And it's especially annoying when he starts playing shit at 4 AM when I have to be at work at 7 AM. Yeah, because six hours of sleep is just fantastic.

Somebody drove a car into one of the groundfloor rooms, luckily the guy who's room it was had just gone to the bathroom.
A sheep and a rabbit were ritually killed outside the block.
Then there were 2 guys who hated each other so much they would try to kill each other at every available opportunity, finally one stabbed the other to death.
Then there was a guy who lived above me who used to hire prostitutes at the weekend, so the noises coming from his room were how shall I put it ...erm... unique ;)

Fun times living there.

Not exactly the kind of show you want to see.

I've had wake-up calls like that before...once I was spending the night at a friend's apartment in California. I didn't know they lived in a bad neighborhood, and during the night there was this massive raid on a nearby building complete with a shoot-out between the ATF and the peeps inside. Crazy go nuts, it was.

Who won?

Last year we had some nextdoor neighbors who were real jackasses.

They'd start playing shitty music full blast at 11:30pm on a Wednesday.

They'd smoke so much weed that our entire floor would stink with the stuff. (While I normally would appreciate a free contact high, both my partner and I have to take random drug tests at our jobs, so we seriously could get fired if we breathed enough of that shit.)

One of them would fight with his girlfriend extremely loudly at all hours. I could hear pretty much everything through the wall of our bedroom. And they had insipid fights, too, so it wasn't even like listening to a good soap opera.

Finally, it got to a point where they woke me up three nights in a row. I wake up at 6:45 to go to work in the morning, and I'm fucking pissed if somebody drags me out of a dead sleep at 3:00am. So I decided that they were going to get to live on my schedule.

Every morning as I left for work, I would loudly bang on their door to wake them up. If I have to be up, fuckers, so do you. My partner leaves about an hour after me, so I told him to do the same. No sleeping in, assholes.

Every weekend day, I would lay on my bed and kick the wall loudly for an hour or so first thing in the morning (usually while reading the paper or something), to make sure they were very much awake. No sleeping in on weekends, either.

The best part was, they already had a pile of noise complaints filed against them, so the management wasn't going to believe a word of it if they tried to complain about us. :D

You're just pure evil aren't you? :)

My story isn't all that great. My downstairs neighbor loves Mariah Carey - Heartbreaker. Every morning for the last semester, I woke up to my bed shaking.

Sad thing is, I kinda love the song now, and miss it :(

You're just pure evil aren't you? :)

The thing about me is, I'm full of surly. Yet, at the same time, I am filled with a puppy-ish desire to be friendly. This is why I typically exhibit an attitude of confused hostility mingled with reflexive politeness.

What keeps me borderline sane is the times when I can feel totally justified in letting out my surly. Revenge is the safety valve on my surly tanks.

About 5:30 this morning I was blasted out of bed by a thunderstorm that, I have found since, has featured: dangerous and frequent lightning strikes, "ground lightning", hail, flooding that's taken out a number of major highways, rail lines, local roads, accidents, and a tornado warning... and indications that some MASSIVE wind gusts (or possible said tornado?) made a brief appearance in Bay Ridge and snapped trees and tossed them around. This is, I should note, NOT TYPICAL WEATHER, EVEN IN SUMMERTIME, FOR NEW YORK CITY.

So what did I do? threw the cat in her carrier, threw some clothes on, and got ready to either hide in the basement (if I heard the archetypal 'freight train' we're told tornados sound like) or (if it started flooding) getting in the car and seeking higher ground. (I'm one short walk away from the water.)

And they say another band of these suckers is coming through this afternoon. :-p

About 5:30 this morning I was blasted out of bed by a thunderstorm that, I have found since, has featured: dangerous and frequent lightning strikes, "ground lightning", hail, flooding that's taken out a number of major highways, rail lines, local roads, accidents, and a tornado warning... and indications that some MASSIVE wind gusts (or possible said tornado?) made a brief appearance in Bay Ridge and snapped trees and tossed them around. This is, I should note, NOT TYPICAL WEATHER, EVEN IN SUMMERTIME, FOR NEW YORK CITY.

So what did I do? threw the cat in her carrier, threw some clothes on, and got ready to either hide in the basement (if I heard the archetypal 'freight train' we're told tornados sound like) or (if it started flooding) getting in the car and seeking higher ground. (I'm one short walk away from the water.)

And they say another band of these suckers is coming through this afternoon. :-p

At least the cat won't be as likely to run from you as a cat who hears a fire alarm.

That is no fun... having to track down a cat who is hiding because of a fire alarm while you're panicking because you don't know where the source is and you've got to get out but you don't wanna leave the damn critter behind.

It still sucks though. Hopefully nothing will come your way. :)

At least the cat won't be as likely to run from you as a cat who hears a fire alarm.

That is no fun... having to track down a cat who is hiding because of a fire alarm while you're panicking because you don't know where the source is and you've got to get out but you don't wanna leave the damn critter behind.

It still sucks though. Hopefully nothing will come your way. :)

The little minx usually thinks carrier=vet and fights with me... I scruffed her and once I lowered her inside, she realized SMALL ENCLOSED SPACE, YAY! and went limp, letting me zip her in.

So there we were on the couch, me sipping tea, and her blessedly NOT yowling in panic anymore...

The show's over for now but jeez. ;) Interesting note -- when all this was going on I packed the cat -- but not the laptop, proving that I am NOT in love with my machine.... ;)

My neighbor has consistently been banging on my floor (her ceiling) every day at 1200, 0300, and sometimes 0430. A whole frigging year! We've tried to talk to her (nicely at first, she's an older lady), but she just hides behind the door threatening to call the cops. We found out that it's because our dogs bark and wake her up. Also they smell wet and that bothers her. And the dog-smell remover machine we run at night distracts her from sleeping. If only we had a dog, I wouldn't think she was such a lunatic. Exactly, I DO NOT OWN A DOG. She's called the superintendent, the owner of the building, animal control, the cops... raving all the while about these mysterious dogs no one else can see or hear.
Incidently, we are moving. So if anyone is interested in a lovely apartment on the north side of downtown...

when my brother was a teenager he used to sneak into my room in the morning and fart in my ear!! I had my revenge though, when he was out at night i poured cold tea in his bed and sharpened all my colouring pencils over it, then pulled the covers up. It was a fairly satisfactory outcome:D

The little minx usually thinks carrier=vet and fights with me... I scruffed her and once I lowered her inside, she realized SMALL ENCLOSED SPACE, YAY! and went limp, letting me zip her in.

So there we were on the couch, me sipping tea, and her blessedly NOT yowling in panic anymore...

The show's over for now but jeez. ;) Interesting note -- when all this was going on I packed the cat -- but not the laptop, proving that I am NOT in love with my machine.... ;)

Oh, but your machine needs to know you love it just as much as your cat. :)

My cat just fights the cage because she prefers to be carried, and subsequently get hair all over me. It doesn't help that everything I own is generally black...

Howling kitties are not fun to deal with... especially ones that know how to meow. It seems the girl cats are louder than boy cats. :)

Who won?

ATF. Barely. I think they had about six people injured and one dead, though most of the peeps inside the building were dead. At one point I could have sworn I heard a bloody grenade blast...

Just this morning, I was woken up at the crack of dawn by horribly loud noise. Sadly, complaining about it would be useless, as thunderstorm clouds are almost as unresponsive as FF7's Cloud.

Often I am woken up by thunder. I could be dead asleep but as soon as I hear thunder I am wide awake and running to the family room with my blanket. I can't sleep through storms.

The thing about me is, I'm full of surly. Yet, at the same time, I am filled with a puppy-ish desire to be friendly. This is why I typically exhibit an attitude of confused hostility mingled with reflexive politeness.

What keeps me borderline sane is the times when I can feel totally justified in letting out my surly. Revenge is the safety valve on my surly tanks.

Ya know, that basically describes the exact personality that would fit the mental image I have of you

Am I the only one who has had to deal with 5 fire alarms going off in the space of 2 hours? I do not miss living in a dorm.

Been there done that. 2am fire alarms minus 20 below outside, on a regular daily basis wasn't fun. I made good use of the pizza parlour nearby though.

I get one of these wake-up calls practically every morning. My damned roommate thinks the first think he needs to do when he gets off work is share the events of the workday with me. Unforunately his "workday" ends at 2:15 AM. I'm going to have to poison his Yoo-Hoo.

I get one of these wake-up calls practically every morning. My damned roommate thinks the first think he needs to do when he gets off work is share the events of the workday with me. Unforunately his "workday" ends at 2:15 AM. I'm going to have to poison his Yoo-Hoo.

I suggest that your answer should be, when awakened next, "Has someone died? Because if not, someone's GOING TO."