The phone rings yesterday morning, waking me out of a blissfully sound sleep. It’s my boss, and I’m 15 minutes late for work! I stare at the alarm clock and see the alarm function is turned to ‘off.’ I *know * I set it last night, but it’s remotely possible that I skipped that step. I madly dash around, skip the shower, skip the makeup, remember to feed my fish, and run out the door. My boss agrees to let me make up the extra half hour this morning.
So there I am…sleeping blissfully again. My bird squawks, waking me up, and I stare at the clock. I was supposed to be up an hour ago! I have exactly 15 minutes to get ready and get to work (8 minutes away) and still be on time. I’m never late, and I don’t want another mark on my record.
I look closer, and I see the alarm function is turned to ‘off’ again. What the hell, I say to myself - I triple checked it last night to be sure it was on. Same with the volume, the time, the AM/PM feature…it was all perfect.
Could this mean…no, it’s impossible. It couldn’t be me! Surely I’m not rolling over and turning it off and going back to sleep without remembering? It’s the elves! They’re playing a trick on me, the little bastards! Tonight I’m setting up some traps. I’m going to horribly mangle some Keebler cookies to lure them in, then Surprise!
Our oven has a default setting of auto (ie you have to set a time for it to come on) but I can never be bothered fiddling with the settings, so I press the manual button so I can switch the oven on now dunno how many times I’ve got to check how’s things a half hour later and discovered the oven wasn’t hot because it’d gone back to auto…
My only issue with alarm clock elves involves the 6’ tall one that sleeps next to me - he turns it off then gets up and makes coffee, reads the paper, etc. But sometimes he comes back upstairs to lay down again and snuggle or whatever, and FALLS BACK ASLEEP! This of course makes ME late. Wish he’d leave my damn clock alone…
Put your alarm clock where you can’t reach it from the bed. I used to have visits from alarm clock elves on a regular basis until I learned this trick.
I use five myself, across three difference devices (DS, DS Lite, and three on my cell-phone).
Overkill? Absolutely, but it ensure I get my ass up every morning. At my job, punctuality is the number one concern, and being late a few times can/will affect your future employment at my company.
So in summary, get a 2nd alarm clock and set both every night. That way if you forget to set it, or it breaks, or something else, you can depend on the spare. My backup(s) has saved my ass a couple times now.
I’m going to get all radical on you here. Do away with the alarm clock. Once you get acclimated to the idea it isn’t there, you’ll probably find that your own body’s alarm clock is better. I haven’t used an alarm clock for years, and I’ve never overslept by more than 15 minutes or so.
I can’t put the alarm any farther out of reach than my bedside table because I have moderate hearing loss and am dead to the world when I take my hearing aids out. Otherwise, it’d be no problem. I can certainly rely on my bird to wake me up, but his idea of morning and my idea differ greatly.
I’ll use my cell phone as backup for a while until those pesky elves (or gnomes) grow bored with me.
While I have occasionally gotten up at a time I wanted to without aid of an alarm, it’s not a permanent solution for me. I’m not a morning person, and it takes a lot to get me out of bed at 6.30am.
If I’m already turning the alarm off in my sleep, there’s no way my body will naturally kick me awake when I need it to.
I use my cell phone as my alarm clock, and it keeps making me late. It takes too long to reset the alarm clock to try to do a snooze so I normally wake up when it goes off, the first time.
I CLEARLY recall setting it last night. I know I wasn’t so drunk as to eff that up (in fact, I’d only had half a beer and wasn’t drunk at all). When I woke up this morning (15 minutes before I was supposed to be at work - Thank God my boss doesn’t come in until an hour after I do) it was off - normally when my phone alarm goes off and someone turns it off, it will say “MISSED ALARM!” on the screen.
Nothing. And the alarm itself wasn’t mis-set; it wasn’t set at all. And I clearly clearly CLEARLY remember setting it.
So yes. The Alarm Clock Gnomes are at it again, with a vengeance. :mad:
Do you by chance have a Samsung? I’ve got the A940 and that little bugger does that to me randomly all the time. Once a week is not outside of the norm for the Alarm Clock Gnomes to attack it.
I’m the same way. What’s more, if I don’t have an alarm clock and I have to get up for something, I sleep very badly, because I’m so afraid I’ll oversleep.
I used to have three separate clocks to wake me up in the morning, because it was so hard for me to do and I would worry about this exact thing happening.
I was able to replace all of my clocks with this clock, and I love it. I’ve never had any problems with it. You can also set it to go off at a different time each day, or a different snooze interval each day. I find that mixing it up helps keep me from oversleeping.
I’ve owned it since the middle 90’s. Works fine, & a good alarm. Battery powered, because I don’t want my alarm to fail. My AAs last about 1½ to 2 years. I have poor vision, & large LEDs put out enough light to be annoting when I try to sleep, but the talking function tells the time just fine.
Ah yes the alarm clock elves (or gnomes whatever) have bothered me quite a few times as well.
I deliver newspapers every morning, so I need to get up around 5 a.m. everyday. I was 100% positive that I set my alarm clock right the night before (and I did), but it was somehow always set a few hours late in the morning. This happened a few times untill I considered that it might not be my alarm clock after all. Around this time I noticed that I had a very pleasant night before (naturally involving alcohol) the damn clock malfunctioned again. Apparantly I would wake up all drowsy, turn of the damn thing and try to set it a few minutes later so I could just sleep a bit more. Turns out I was changing the hours not the minutes… :smack:
Now I got a alarm clock with a ‘repeat alarm’ option, didn’t have the same problem again.
I never turn my alarm ‘off’. Even on the weekend I just let it go off at 6:20 AM and hit the button that turns it off for that cycle and go back to sleep.
