It doesn’t require a stint actually living with roommates to know just how annoying other people can be. Sometimes just a night at a hotel with thin walls, or living in an apartment or house next door to people on different schedules to you is enough to show you how disruptive it can be if your neighbour is making breakfast, slamming their cupboard doors closed, and running up and down stairs while you’re trying to sleep. Sure you don’t say anything – after all, they’re in their own space, living their lives as is their right – but that doesn’t stop you grumbling a little about it under your breath.

So if you’ve never lived with roommates, imagine how much more frustrating it can be if these noises are actually coming from within your home – maybe even in the next room. Perhaps you’ve worked a late shift and are trying to sleep in, but your roommate is grinding all the fruit for a smoothie in the kitchen. Or it’s late and all you can hear is the heavy landings as your roommate jumps along to an HIIT video in her room.

Again though, for the most part this is just something you find yourself having to put up with. After all, you chose to live in a house with other people – other adults just trying to live their lives. So unless the noise is unreasonable, you swallow any frustration, out of respect for your roommate in the same way you’d hope they’d tolerate your annoying habits too.

But the roommates in this story are having a very different experience – and are actively doing their best to be quiet as their light sleeper roommate can’t cope with being awoken in the middle of the night. But as time went on, her requests got more and more unreasonable.

Read on to find out what happened.

AITA when my roommate is a light sleeper and after multiple complaints from her I advised her to see a doctor?

In our house, there’s five people and four cats. Everyone there is safely full of love, and I don’t think anyone truly has any malice, but sometimes I do think there’s lack of consideration and maybe it comes from all of us.

Recently, it’s been an issue where my roommate who is in school gets woken up by us closing doors or closing the toilet or anything really.

She tried to resolve the problem by turning on a fan in her room to help with the sound, and I tried to help by putting hush bumps on everyone’s doors.

But sometimes they don’t work perfectly, because it doesn’t stop the click from the door knob so you have to close it with the awareness that you have to turn the door knob.

Let’s see how that’s affecting the roommates.

After months, she’s still complaining that the noise wakes her up, and then she can’t go back to sleep and that she loses out on like four to five hours of sleep.

While I do understand because she’s in school and has a lot going on at this point, it feels medical.

In our roommate chat, I sent a message along the lines of: “I’m not trying to come off any kind of way. We’ve tried all these things. Have you considered maybe seeing if a doctor could prescribe you something?”

And this has left the concerned roommate worrying that they’ve overstepped.

I know we’re all different people, but personally, the other four people in the house hear a noise and go right back to sleep or don’t wake up at all.

And I don’t wanna be disrespectful, but that is my last suggestion to her because I’m not sure how else we can try to be quieter when sometimes it’s by accident.

She didn’t respond to that, and she’s not responding to anything I’ve said I even tried to message her privately outside of the roommate chat.

It’s clear that these roommates have done everything they can to be quiet and help the sleepless woman with her issue.

But really, if you’re living in a shared house, there’s not much more that anyone can do.

Because humans make noise, and unless she doesn’t want people to move at all while she’s sleeping, she has to find a way to deal with this.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer complaint that led to them losing their VIP status.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that the roommates had gone above and beyond, but it was her problem now.

While others suggested potential remedies.

Meanwhile, this Redditor suggested that perhaps the roommate needed to live alone.

The sad fact is that if you can’t sleep through a door being quietly closed at night, then perhaps living in a house of five adults and four cats is not for you. Because even though her roommates have done everything they can to live quietly while she’s sleeping, the reality is that it’s impossible for them to be completely silent. Unless they are expected to sit completely still, not go to the bathroom, not get a drink or something to eat, or otherwise interact in any way while she is sleeping, they are not going to be able to be silent. And to suggest measures like that would be even more unreasonable than this situation already is.

Sure, it’s not the woman’s fault that she is a light sleeper and struggles to get back to sleep. But she needs to understand that – with the deepest of sympathies – that is her condition to find a way to cope with. Asking her roommates for support or advice is one thing, but requesting them to change their ways to accommodate her is a whole other thing altogether. She might have been offended by the suggestion that she see a doctor – something that might not be super helpful – but you can’t blame her roommate for thinking this is the only logical conclusion. After all, they’ve tried everything.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about someone who asked their neighbor to move their fence off their property, then learned the neighbor was trying to claim their land as theirs instead.