Imagine taking time off work to do a home renovation construction project on your house. What would you do if your neighbor worked the night shift? Would you keep working during the day as usual, or would you make a point of not doing any loud work so the neighbor could sleep during the day?

In this story, one man is in this situation, and he refuses to put the power tools away just because the neighbor is upset. However, he’s wondering if he’s actually handling this situation correctly.

Let’s read all the details.

AITA For using power tools during the day when I have a neighbour who works nightshift?

I’m a self employed, sole trader who has taken time off work to renovate my own house. I try to do all my large power tool usage (drop saws, grinders, routers, circular saw, etc) outside where the workbench is in large blocks, reason for this is that there is a bit of setup with running power/clean up/using large material that can’t fit inside.

This is done for efficiency, not only practicality.

Unfortunately I have new neighbours who today experienced a “big cutting day” for the first time and they work nightshift all week, every week.

I started work at 9am – two hours after the allowed 7am power tool usage in my area and finished at 4pm.

The neighbor was really upset.

They were… Not very happy with me and used rather colourful language.

I responded calmly, understanding that they are tired however the world cannot stop for them, this is quite literally my job.

In addition, there is rain predicted for the rest of the week which would bring the project to a standstill if these cuts aren’t done.

For clarity, the there is no space available to do this job anywhere else.

The neighbor wouldn’t be able to follow through with their threat.

They did the classic threat of being noisy with loud music at 3am when my family is sleeping, to which I reminded them that is actually illegal, where I could be paying a tradesman to do the work and it’d be no different (opposed to starting at 7am).

They aggressively suggested I do it on weekends, however that is when my family are not at work/school and I’d like to spend time with them. In addition, I believe this would negatively impact the most amount of people, with power tools being used when majority are at home.

Bonus, I don’t actually want to annoy my new neighbours but I (clearly) do feel strongly that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

I understand why the neighbor was annoyed, but it’s unreasonable to tell OP not to work during the day when it’s not quiet hours and most people are awake.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person is on OP’s side.

Someone who works night shift weighs in.

Here’s the perspective of another night shift worker.

It could be worse!

His neighbor really has nothing to complain about.

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