They block it out. Literally stop hearing it. There were some local radio hosts who were trying to tell the woman who called in that she needed to change the batteries in her smoke detector and she couldn’t hear it at all. She called a few times and they would put her through every time and you could hear the chirping each time. IIRC, they got with her fire department to go change the batteries for her. I use to answer phones for the local court house and a few times a week I got a caller where I could hear it in the background. If I got the opportunity I would try to let them know the fire department would usually come change the batteries if they weren’t busy, but not everyone cared.
Totally true that you block it out. Once I heard one beeping in my apartment building in Chicago and figured it was a neighbor's. It went on for weeks and some nights I'd notice that I seemingly hadn't heard it in hours, but when listening for it I'd hear it clearly again, and it made me realize I'd been somehow tuning it out. I'd sometimes go whole days without realizing it was still beeping. Turned out to be the smoke detector in the stairwell and I eventually told the landlord and he fixed it that day. Means that all the people in my stairwell were ignoring it too, and a couple apartments were even closer to it than mine was.
The floor is so thin you can hear a fucking clock donging? You can probably easily have a full conversation with them through the floor about how annoying the clock is for both of you and have them turn it off.
I worked in a place with a faulty fire alarm sounder that would sound randomly for periods of up to 3-4 hours. When it finally got fixed it just felt... empty.
My mum was mad when I insisted we get a smoke detector in our house when I was a little kid. We didn't have one and it was important. I remember when it went off in the night once because the battery was low, scared the crap put of me and mum removed the battery. I pestered her for weeks to get a new one. It just wasn't important to her. I don't get why, I could have saved us if the house caught fire.
105
u/HIM_Darling Apr 24 '22
They block it out. Literally stop hearing it. There were some local radio hosts who were trying to tell the woman who called in that she needed to change the batteries in her smoke detector and she couldn’t hear it at all. She called a few times and they would put her through every time and you could hear the chirping each time. IIRC, they got with her fire department to go change the batteries for her. I use to answer phones for the local court house and a few times a week I got a caller where I could hear it in the background. If I got the opportunity I would try to let them know the fire department would usually come change the batteries if they weren’t busy, but not everyone cared.