A lot of people find their neighbors annoying, at least according to a Lemonade Insurance poll. However, most wouldn’t think to rat them out over the sound of vegetables being chopped.
Or, would they? Over the weekend the Daily Mirror in the U.K. reported on the case of a woman complaining because neighbors were “chopping tomatoes too loud.”
The outlet cited a March post from the Mumsnet message boards by a user named “labradoodledoodle” who claimed to live in a flat with her husband and son above a very noise-sensitive woman.
“Not long after I moved in, so this is 5 years ago now, the lady who lives downstairs caught me one day outside to tell me that we should walk around more quietly because it’s disturbing her and called me specifically ‘a heavy walker,’” said the post. This neighbor apparently complained to the homeowners association about the noise – even though they never had loud parties or played music.
Some of the commenters on the post agreed that the tomato-chopping complaint was a step too far.
“To me, if someone’s going to complain about veg getting chopped too loudly, I wouldn’t care about their opinion ever, ever again,” said LuvSmallDogs.
“I think if someone comes upstairs to complain about chopping veg it sounds quite mad!” said dottiedodah.
“She sounds utterly ridiculous and I’d probably disregard the complaints of someone who thought that stating someone was chopping tomatoes too loudly was a valid complaint,” said NeverThatSerious.
Certain conditions can include a heightened sensitivity to sounds – including something that seems as innocuous as vegetables being cut. According to a 2010 article in the Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences, the condition phonophobia can present as a “persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of sound,” including “normal environmental sounds (e.g., traffic, kitchen sounds, doors closing, or even loud speech) that cannot under any circumstances be damaging.”
Per that Lemonade Insurance study of 1,000 Americans, 52% of participants were annoyed by their neighbors multiple times a year, and 35% were annoyed by their neighbors at least once a month. Millennials found their neighbors more annoying compared other generations, followed by Gen Z.
While getting embarrassed about a neighbors’ complaints is uncomfortable, the tomato-chopping couple might have got off easy. Local media in Carroll County, Iowa reported this week that a man there was arrested after allegedly threatening a roofing crew with a firearm over noise complaints.
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