BINTEL BRIEFMy noisy, addled neighbor is ruining my sleep. Please don’t tell me to get ear plugs
Image by Beth Harpaz/Canva
By Beth Harpaz May 10, 2024
A Bintel Brief, Yiddish for a bundle of letters, has been solving reader dilemmas since 1906. Send yours via email, social media or this form.
Dear Bintel:
The TV-blaring antics at all hours of the night of a hard-of-hearing, memory-impaired nonagenarian neighbor in the assisted living facility where I live has resulted in a series of sleepless nights for me. My circadian rhythm is discombobulated to the point where even sleeping pills do not work. For this, I pay $250 a day.
If a person is not mindful of the consequences of their actions on others, to me this indicates a diminished capacity that requires the intervention of others. This has not happened; building management has dawdled in addressing my complaints.
A communal setting necessitates some loss of autonomy, with boundaries, rights and responsibilities. IMHO, my neighbor’s privacy rights begin and end at her door’s threshold, mine at my door’s threshold. Her blaring the TV spills over into the hallway (public domain) and into my room — even when my door is closed. Her conduct violates my rights to privacy.
The facility I am in promotes itself as being Jewish. So, presumably, it aligns with Jewish values. According to halacha/Jewish values, what gets prioritized: One resident’s right to enjoyment, comfort and convenience vs. another’s right (mine) to mental and physical health? (To say that I should get ear plugs or headphones, IMHO, amounts to blaming the victim.)
Sleepless but Not in Seattle
Dear Sleepless:
For sure you deserve a good night’s sleep. I, too, am sensitive to sound, and cannot sleep without a fan, white-noise machine or air purifier masking background noise.
The solution seems simple enough: Your neighbor or the facility must turn the TV down.
But it may be more complicated than it appears. Perhaps aides turn the TV up because your neighbor gets agitated if she can’t hear it. Or maybe she turns it up herself but is too addled to understand that it disturbs others. Of course, neither scenario makes it less awful for you.
As for Talmudic validation of the righteousness of your grievance — well, we’d need to convene a beit din to rule on whose needs take priority, and Bintel’s not up for that. But your letter did bring to mind an old Yiddish expression about banging a teakettle — hakn a tshaynik.
We tell someone to “quit banging the teakettle” when their rattling on or kvetching is driving us nuts. In order to get rid of the real noise next door, make your own commotion.
But you must direct your complaints to the right authorities. I asked JASA, the Jewish Association Serving the Aging, for guidance.
If your facility’s social worker or administration won’t help, find out if there is an in-house or external system for complaints. JASA’s Lori Hardoon said that in New York, nursing homes and assisted living facilities have in-house resident councils and ombudspeople. The state also operates an ombudsman hotline for long-term care. Wherever you are, there’s also likely a community-based social service organization or governmental agency dedicated to helping older adults navigate concerns.
Enlist others as advocates, too. You say the facility is Jewish; reach out to the rabbi. I’d contact friends or family as well. Who’s the nosiest, most assertive person you know — the kind of person who complains if they don’t get the sale price, who’s a pitbull when it comes to navigating bureaucracies? Do you have a niece who’s a lawyer, a cousin who’s a therapist, a busybody friend? Ask them to make calls on your behalf, to speak to supervisors and follow up until the facility takes action.
If, for whatever reason, the volume is not lowered to the point where you can’t hear it, consider asking to move to a room in a different location.
I know you feel that, as the “victim,” it should not be on you to solve the problem, and certainly asking to be moved is a much bigger inconvenience than donning earplugs. But while I agree you are entitled to quiet, sometimes it makes sense to focus more on the outcome than the principle, and it’s a whole lot easier to change your own behavior than someone else’s.
As I mentioned, I use a white-noise machine to block out noisy neighbors, garbage trucks, my husband’s snoring and even birdsong. These days, you can also easily download your choice of pouring rain, crashing waves or the hum of an air conditioner via an app on your smartphone. Sweet dreams.
Do you have an opinion about this Bintel, or a question of your own? We’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected].
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the organization abbreviated JASA. It is Jewish Association Serving the Aging, not Jewish Association Serving the Aged.
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