I had a weird and annoying thing happen last night. When my buzzer rings and I'm not expecting anyone, I ignore it. So many times I'd trudge upstairs, thinking some friend was battered and bleeding on my doorstep, only to have it be someone cheerily saying that they locked themselves out or some delivery guy pressing the wrong button, etc.
The buzzing in attempt started about 11 pm and I ignored it, but it happened about every 20 minutes -- just blasting on the buzzer for 30 seconds straight and this went on until about 3 am. I considered calling the police, but if it were someone in this building, I didn't want to have any feud started. It was difficult for me to call 911 since this really wasn't an emergency. I also didn't want to interact with the person. If I had asked who it was, and it was someone saying they were locked out, I would have been so angry that I wouldn't have wanted to let them in -- and if I did let them in, I didn't want to reward that horried behavior -- yeah, just keep buzzing and eventually someone will let you in.
I really wracked my brain over whether this could be someone I know -- and unless there's some highly unusual circumstance, I couldn't think of anybody. I also thought that if you need refuge in my apartment, telephone me. And if you didn't have a phone (or a quarter to make a call), then someone would loan you their cellphone for one call.
I am not usually this passive when it comes to things. The buzzing eventually stopped, and I do believe I made the right decision by ignoring it, or attempting to. It was maddening to finally doze off to sleep only to be blasted awake by the buzzer.
3 comments:
I have to say that would scare me. I don't know what the right thing to do would be but especially since you can't see the person at the door, I probably would have done what you did. I wonder if other apartments in the building also got buzzed.
I agree with you not to answer - a friend would call you first, even without a cell phone there are still pay phones in NY. It seems you need your bldg management to install a security camera at the front door so you can monitor who rings there!
I did find it scary because it was so relentless and so rude that I thought it must be personal, but I couldn't for the life of me think of any backstory that made sense.
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