In the apartment building where I currently live, there is a laundry room with a large sign on the front (put up by the landlord) indicating that the hours of operation are 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. This is for the benefit of the occupant of unit number four, whose bedroom shares a wall with the laundry room. As it so happens, that lucky occupant is me.

For some reason, it seems that people don’t obey signs like this. Now, I’m certainly not one to obey rules simply for the sake of obeying them, but in this case the rationale is clear: running the laundry room during those hours has a good chance of disrupting the sleep of the person on the other side of the wall.

This morning, a little after 7, I was fast asleep (having stayed up late last night) when I was awakened by the washing machine. This has happened several times before, though usually it’s late at night instead of early in the morning, and I’ve gotten sick of it. I opened the washer to shut it off and left a polite but firm note with the hours of operation and a request that they be respected. Then, at 8:08, the washer started up again, waking me up again. Normally, even I might let this slide, but I had just left a note saying please don’t run the washing machine until 8:30—and, let it be noted, 8:08 is less than 8:30. Why he couldn’t just wait another 22 goddamn minutes I don’t know. I shut off the washer again and left another, even more firmly worded note.

I’m pretty confident that the person on the receiving end of these notes (and the associated washer stoppages) thinks I’m a dick. Some of the readers of this blog might even think so too. Maybe I am a dick. But the person running the washer is an even bigger dick, not only for flouting the rules (and thereby waking me up), but also for putting me in the position of being either a dick or a doormat.

One thing I’ve learned is that if you just “suck it up and deal” in situations like this, then people will walk all over you. I’ve therefore resolved never to be a doormat, even if it means sometimes being a dick.

N.B. This specific situation will soon be a moot point since I’m moving to Silicon Valley in December. Interested readers who don’t know why can email me off-blog to find out.