Courtesy, Thou Art Dead

The BBQ Pit
1

To the dumb bitches living on this hall:

Apparently, my repeated attempts to get you to think of others rather than your drunk-ass selves have failed miserably. Ergo, I shall use smaller words that have a greater chance of penetrating your thick skulls.

Turn.
That.
Shit.
Down.
And.
Shut.
Up.

I deal with stupid people all day long. I expect these people to be stupid because they are, after all, only fifteen-sixteen. You are all nineteen or twenty. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I expect better when I get home.

Not everybody in this world likes r&b crap just because it’s popular. You have effectively killed POD’s “Alive” for me with your repeated (LOUD) playing EVERY SINGLE FUCKING WEEKEND LAST SEMESTER. Yes, I’m glad it gave you hope in this wacky post-9/11 world we live in. Now turn it off and never play it again.

Also, the rest of us really don’t want to hear your loud cellphone conversations in the middle of the hallway. So your roommate wanted to sleep/study/have sex? Great, I’m glad you gave her the consideration of leaving. Now let’s apply that to the rest of us on this hall. Yes, people sleep/study/have sex in rooms other than yours and we really don’t care why your best friend broke up with her sixth boyfriend this week. The same applies when your roommate’s in the shower and someone calls. What you are supposed to do is take a message so she can call back when she’s back. You do not yell down the hall “<insert name here>! <insert name here>'s on the phone!”

And you. Yes, you on the pot with the cellphone. Do you know how unutterably disgusting it is to be on the phone with someone and suddenly hear a flush or…worse yet… a watery plop? Have you no class? While I’m at it, what kind of person are you talking to that wouldn’t hang up immediately when they found out you’re on the toilet? Hell, they might be in there too for all I know. I hope your boss calls your cell one day when you’ve carried it the thirty feet from your room to the bathroom. Lord knows we wouldn’t want to miss any important messages in the time it takes us to pee.

Special to my next-door neighbor: You have an annoying laugh and your friends are all loud dumb bitches. Don’t think the fact that you’re dating an RA will protect you. I dated an RA for three years and it didn’t do shit for me in terms of protection from the rules. Next time you and your friends get together for an all night gab on Wednesday night, expect to be woken at seven a.m. the next morning as I turn my radio on all the way as I get ready for work. Let’s see how you like The Cult first thing in the morning you Ja Rule-listening asswipe.

2

I feel your pain, but look on the bright side:

If they were only doing this on the weekend, they were far more courteous than some people I’ve had the misfortune to encounter. Count your (admittedly meager) blessings.

3

I talk on the phone while I’m on the crapper. Just not (I guess) with people like you. Once I left a message on someone’s answering machine while I was audibly peeing. But I only do these things with people who can appreciate them. And I don’t think they (or I) would appreciate your insinuation that we have no class. I’m willing to accept that there are people in this world that have Puritanical and prudish ideas about bodily functions, it seems only fair for you to accept that there are those that don’t.

Other than that though, I’m totally with you. Well, it’s strange that you seemed to associate POD with R&B, but that seemed unintentional. So, other than that, I’m totally with you. I was lucky in my college career to mostly have roommates and neighbors that were rational and considerate. Except when I lived in that apartment with 10 people and 2 showers. But that wasn’t really anybody’s fault that things got a little heated.

So, I hope your neighbors get what’s coming to them. Next time somebody’s talking on the phone in the hallway, just come out and start shouting about something strange. My freshman year one girl used to take the phone into the hall, in order to let her roommate sleep, because it was 3 AM. And then she’d call her boyfriend in another state and pitch a fit or go on a crying jag. We felt too bad for her to mess with her, since her boyfriend was cheating on her left and right, but it was still pretty irritating.

4

Ahhhh, I lived on a quiet hall. Memories…
So anyway, bitching about neighbors?? I have a new upstairs neighbor, and I hate her with a fiery hate. She apparently keeps vampire’s hours, which is completely her business. The only problem is that her bedroom is directly above mine, which means all night I hear her walking 'round her bedroom OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I wrote her a note basically saying, “If these hours are going to be normal for you, we should get together to discuss ways to keep us both happy.” She wrote back saying, “If you don’t like it, move to an apartment where you’re on the top floor so you won’t have to worry about it. Your discomfort is not my problem.”

Yesterday, she and her boyfriend yelled at each other all night and proceeded to build something requiring much hammering all day. I was trying to take a nap to recover from my sleep-interrupted night when the hammering started. I paid $5.00 to go see Amelie AGAIN just to get away from it all.

ARGH. I hate her. So much.

Of course, what she doesn’t realize is that I used to work for this complex, and they love me. Plus, three noise complaints equals an eviction. I’m just biding my time.

5

Oh.

6

Welcome to the age of the cell phone, where the world is your living room. Be it highway, movie theater, book store, restaurant, everyplace you go is an opportunity to turn into your own personal hangout, if only for a while. Feel free to make as much noise as you want, do whatever you want - after all, you have a right to be there. Always remember, YOU are the center of the universe.

Courtesy? Oh no, that’s long gone. Way gone. There was a time when people were content to simply not give a shit about anyone else. We’re past that now, and have moved on the the stage of a constant “fuck you” to anyone else. From apathy to hostility - that’s progress.

So turn up the stereo, whip out the cell phone, throw your trash where you want - it’s YOUR world. Everyone else can go to hell.

7

Gah. College dorms can be a bitch, can’t they?

The hallway-phone-talking thing doesn’t really bother me too much. Hell, if my roommate’s sleeping, I’ll talk in the hall. Quietly. Most of the other people I’ve encountered here do the same; they don’t scream into the phone and such.

The music thing, though, I can totally relate to. The people next door to my dorm room like to play loud music between 1 and 5 in the afternoon. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that this is often when I take a nap (I’m a night person). Still, I’m willing to put up with being able to hear the music. However, when I can feel the bass throughout my body as I’m lying down. . .then it’s too loud. This volume level makes it hard to even STUDY, let alone sleep.

Also, my dorm room is across the hallway from the drinking fountain and the bathroom, and right next to the lounge. Thus, people tend to congregate in front of our door. I’ve had to go out there at midnight, one AM some days to tell the people to shut UP, because both my roommate and I were sleeping, we had early classes the next day, and (in one case) I had a fucking migraine.

I’ve learned to live with some of the noise. The rest of the time…either invest in earplugs or be blunt, that’s what I say.

8

Haha, on my floor we had a guy whose emotional response to 9-11 was putting his massive stereo speakers on the windowsill, turning the volume all the way up, putting “Freebird” on repeat, locking his door, and leaving the room for hours.

At least it wasn’t POD.

9

Ah, dorm room living. Brings back memories, it does. What I couldn’t understand then was why in the hell folks couldn’t quietly shut their doors rather than slamming them so loud they made the building vibrate and scared the bejesus out of me. Or the need to blast stereo speakers that are taller than me and that make the building vibrate at six in the morning and that I’m absolutely certain caused significant hearing loss to those within their immediate vicinity. [sigh] Loud ass motherfuckers.

I also don’t understand the current epidemic of loud talking on cell phones in public spaces either. I’m the last person anyone who knows me would call a prude, but I don’t understand taking strangers into the toilet with you. Folks, trying to talk while straining to get that turd out does not make for effective communication. :rolleyes: And call me retarded, but I’m not really sure how effective a tone is set to whatever conversation one may be having by having a fart go off in the background, as hilarious as that is. But whether it’s in the bathroom, in the hall, in a restaurant, on the bus, in the classroom when I or my colleagues are trying to teach, on a plane, while I’m walking down the street, I really don’t give a crying fuck about other folks’ personal business being blabbed out. I have enough shit of my own to contend with, and I don’t want to know about who’s the latest conquest, or what’s the latest purchase so and so made. Although I hate the damn phone anyway, I absolutely despise cell phones because for some reason when some folks get cell phones they lose all track of common sense and courtesy. Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t be shouting all your and your friend’s personal business at the dinner table in a restaurant for various and sundry strangers to be forced to hear, nor would you be spouting off personal business at the dinner table at home, or at least I’d hope your family would train you not to do so. Just because you have a cell phone should not erase that training. Most of these contraptions now have a voice mail mode so just pay a few extra dollars and get that feature, turn the phones off, and shut the hell up. Or better yet, until they get the technology straightened out so that you can get better reception without having to stand outside or in the hall or sit on the toilet with a tinfoil hat to direct the cell waves more precisely, don’t fool with cell phones at all. We have perfectly good phones with internal voice mail or external answering machines that have been around for decades, and last time I looked, they work just fine.

I also for the life of me don’t understand why folks in upstairs apartments feel the need to take up carpentry projects, breakdance, do Irish jigs, flying leaps, slam dancing, practice for the next Stomp! musical audition, or have a good old fashioned screaming tantrum at 2 fucking a.m. in the goddamn morning. Even if I’m up at that hour, it still doesn’t mean I want to hear your bullshit. I mean really. What makes folks just lose sight of any kind of home training they ever had?

Great rant, SpazCat et al.. Just had to throw my two cents in here. Carry on.

10

CAN YOU PEOPLE PLEASE SHUT UP, I’M TALKING ON MY CELLPHONE HERE!

:smiley:

I know what y’all mean - it sure as hell seems that common courtesy is going by the wayside these days. Perfect example - on the train to work a couple of weeks ago, I’m sitting behind a college-age guy who’s wearing headphones and BLASTING rap or hip-hop. He’s listening to it loud enough that I can understand the lyrics (and I ain’t even the one with the headphones on). That wasn’t too bad, comparatively.

Until he removed the headphones and hung them from around his neck, STILL AT TOP VOLUME. I figured, “he’s just adjusting his Walkman or something, he’ll put 'em back on in a second.”

Nope.

No such luck. Two minutes go by and the kid, still pumping out tinny Busta Rhymes out of his headphones, is sitting there reading a magazine. I finally had to tap him on the shoulder and ask him to pretty please turn the headphones down or put them on, or I’d install them free of charge in the body cavity of his choice. (And he looked surprised that anyone would object! Hey, it’s a morning train, pal, half of us are trying to sleep.) He put 'em back on pretty quickly after that.

And as for your upstairs neighbors, shrew, is there an apartment manager or landlord you can tell about their noisy habits? I had a similar problem with an upstairs neighbor who told me kindly to piss off after I asked him to keep it down - talked to the landlord, landlord reminded the neighbor who owned the building and what the lease had to say about quiet enjoyment of the premises and what the consequences could be about disturbing the other tenants… problem solved.

11

Oh…loud people.

Ugh…loud people.

My next door neighbor was great friends with the RA. On more than one occasion I was shaken awake by the bass next door at 3am to go and chastise the batch of them, RA and all about late night noise.

Hell. It was hell. I hate being the adult at three am growling “Is there any reason for this?” and watching the RA cringe.

And yea, I reported her to the RD. Numerous times. Not that it helped.

Though I do have a comment on cell phones. I hold cell phone convos where ever I would feel comfortable holding face to face convos. Bathrooms are out. Public walkways are in. Classrooms, movie theatres, out. Resturants, hallways, busses, in. Okay, resturants are sometimes iffy, if its a low lit, quiet upscale place I probably won’t, but if its family dining I will feel free. General rule of thumb: If I would hold that same conversation in here with that person if they were also here, its fair game. (All of this is off course modified by volume, my cell is just as good as a landline phone and unless I’m standing out by a busy road I don’t have to raise my voice. There’s never really a good non emergency reason to yell.)

12

Yes, as I said in my first post, I’m biding my time before bringing in the big guns. I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. I understand unpacking can be laborious and loud, and she only moved in about a week ago. I keep expecting to run into her in the parking lot or something so I can introduce myself, possibly create a positive spark between us, but she doesn’t seem to ever leave her apartment. Maybe she’s Eric Rudolph. :wink:

13

Well, if she comes downstairs and asks to borrow a cup of Semtex and some blasting caps, then I’d definitely be worried. :slight_smile:

14

Reminds me of my golden days in the dorms … I had one next door neighbor who was quite fond of loud hip hop. One time, he had it cranked up so damn loud that it knocked books off of our shelf!

The guys downstairs from me right now aren’t exactly angels, either, lemme tell ya. I swear I hear a 4/4 beat approximately 4 hours per day from down there. It’s situations like this that make me want to break out my Skinny Puppy and Einsturzende Neubauten cd’s when I wake up at 6:30 in the morning for work…

Colin