Imagine deciding to open a small business and leasing a space in a building that is attached to the restaurant next door by one wall. If you had a lot of construction projects to complete before opening, would you only work when the restaurant is closed so you don’t disturb the customers, or would you work as much as possible to make sure you’re ready for opening day?

In this story, one couple is in this exact situation. They try to avoid working when the restaurant is open, but they have so much work to do that it’s not possible. Now, the business owner has complained and even a waitress complained.

The couple feels bad about the situation, but they don’t think it’s realistic not to work on the weekends.

Keep reading for the whole story.

AITA for doing construction on the weekends?

So me(37f) and my husband (39m) are in the process of opening a new business, and just signed the lease 30 days ago.

The space needs lots of mostly minor construction (new flooring, some wood replaced, demo of an old walk in, etc) to open and the landlord gave us permission in writing to complete the construction ourselves as none of it requires a permit.

I’m keeping my day job until we open to help financially, which means we only have evenings and weekends to work on the place. We are on a VERY tight timeline to finish all construction before we open, so EVERY free minute in my life involves a hammer and nails right now.

Here’s the deal with the business next door…

Now, next door in the same building (we share a wall) is a restaurant. They are open for breakfast su-thu till 2pm and 6am-8pm fri-sa.

We signed the lease anticipating to have some issues because the owner of the restaurant next door USED TO have a similar type of business as ours and it failed due to some of their choices in a different business they owned. (They took money for contract work and never provided the service and got called out for it and essentially got run out of town due to their shifty practices).

This restraunt is the last of their 4 business that is in operation and its barely hanging on (even before we got there).

The restaurant owner is really upset.

Now the restraunt owner has come over EVERY Friday and Saturday to complain about something we are doing and stating that he is having to shut down the restaurant early.

I have explained to him that We have tried really hard to work when he’s not open (3pm to midnight) BUT to meet our deadline of loading in equipment next week we HAVE TO work weekends.

We also explained that our business is going to be loud generally speaking just due to the nature if the business (which he should know, he used to own one) and told him we hope once we open, that we will draw folks to his business since we won’t be serving food.

She’s not worried about what he thinks, but she feels bad for the waitresses.

But he doesn’t care and comes to pester us all the time.

He even called the landlords to come talk to us, but they came over and were just amazed at how nice we were making their space look, and had no concerns.

I’m not concerned about him really, everyone in town hates him and i dont really care if he thinks we’re jerks, but one of the waiters explained to us that our noise is affecting their tips and how many hours they work and that they are struggling financially and that makes us jerks since we won’t NOT work on the weekends.

It’s too bad the waitresses are struggling, but they have a business to launch.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

This person encourages her to keep working on her business.

Another person offers a suggestion of what to tell the restaurant owner.

It’ll be worth it when they’re done.

Everyone seems to agree that she’s not doing anything wrong.

I can understand why the restaurant owner is upset, but they’re not doing anything wrong. It really is too bad it’s impacting the waitress’s tips and hours, but they have a business to open. The quicker they get the construction work done, the better it will be for everyone.

Nobody likes construction noise, but their business can’t open until they’re done. Not working on the weekends just isn’t realistic.