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If you’ve got a child or live in a noisy neighbourhood, you’ll know how difficult it can be to sleep when there’s a lot of disturbances going on around you. Any parents know how exhausted the time until your kid sleeps through the night can be, and how hard it can be to function at work – and to get there in the first place.

Sleep deprivation can really mess with your body, with everything from your mental health and emotional regulation to your metabolism and cardiovascular system affected by not getting enough zs. So it’s no wonder that the guy in this story is getting frustrated at his roommate, who insists on talking to his friends and playing games online all through the night.

The worst part of him not getting enough sleep? This guy is in the military – a super physical job in which even the smallest mistakes could have devastating, even life-ending consequences. So focus and mental resilience is vital, something that is only going to keep deteriorating the longer it goes before he gets a good night’s sleep.

Read on to find out what’s going on here.

Am I overreacting for asking my roomie to leave our room?

Alright so I (26, male) joined the military. I’m living in the barracks because I don’t have a choice since I am not married.

My roommate (24, male) likes to talk on the phone or on Discord calls with his buddies till late hours of the night. I’m a light sleeper and I let him know that, but I try to be considerate to let him live life as neither of us wants to be in the barracks.

But he constantly wakes me up from getting excited over his games, or just being loud on the phone in general. We don’t have a big barracks. At any time we’re within 5-7ft of each other so even regular talking on the phone is pretty noisy.

I think it’s worth noting we have quiet hours that start at 10pm throughout the barracks.

But there is more to this roommate complaint than just the noise.

Now this is the part that upsets me. This guy has a vehicle that he had delivered to base, and on Sunday night I had to work at midnight.

I got back to the room at 5:30pm and wanted to go to bed at 6pm so that I could get some sleep before my duty.

He kept waking me up and I asked him if he couldn’t control himself enough to be quiet to go to one of the many lounges provided to us or if he was looking for privacy to go sit in his car.

Read on to find out how his roommate reacted.

He told me I was overreacting and I need to stop trying to control him.

Due to this I woke up at 11:20pm with maybe 2-2.5 hours of interrupted sleep, and only after I woke up to get ready for my duty the guy decides to finally get off the games and go to sleep. Yes, at 11:20pm when he saw me get up for duty he got into bed and went to sleep.

I’m at the point where I’m ready to go to my command with a list of grievances to see what can be done about this.

So, am I overreacting?

Look, it’s not like these are two college kids who don’t have class in the morning.

These are two grown, working men, and this guy really needed sleep before he got up to work.

The fact that his roommate refuses to respect this – continually disrupting his sleep – is horrendous etiquette.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person was appalled by the roommate’s behaviour.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who shuts down her neighbor’s construction project after her property gets damaged.

While others encouraged him to collect evidence and make a complaint.

Meanwhile, this Redditor had been in a similar situation, and encouraged him to look into a room swap.

It sucks that he’s having to go through this, all while enduring the gruelling military lifestyle. He’s working unsociable hours, so it seems quite obvious that he needs his sleep, and the fact that his roommate is not respecting that fact is awful. There is no way at all that he should be continually made to share a room with a guy so intent on disrupting his sleep, and if he continues to behave like this surely the higher-ups would see it the same way.

Honestly, trying to work any job on two hours sleep is unpleasant, but for someone in the military it could be downright dangerous.

Sure it might be difficult to be living in a barracks away from his home and friends, but that is what this guy’s roommate signed up for, and he needs to figure out a way to keep in touch with his homies without being so disruptive to his roommate. Because really, no one can live like this.