I live next door to a summer camp. The kind that has kids from the nearby city come for 2 weeks, sleep in bunks, play outside all day, hike, etc.
A few months ago we had a carpenter doing some work on the house, and he was asking me about the camp and living so near to it. Eventually he asked "Are they loud when they play? That must be so annoying. I'd hate that."
I replied "Nah, it's healthy and fun, and it doesn't travel as far as you'd think. The real annoying sounds are all the lawnmowers, weed whackers, and gasoline powered tools that people keep using throughout the summer". He immediately went quiet and sour. Guess I hit a nerve.
Certainly, which is why the social interaction OP described makes sense.
But OP was specific in the loud things they mentioned, and that list very much does not directly imply carpentry. So to then make it about OP's lack of tact by explicitly calling out the OP for focusing on their profession? It strains credulity as a good faith reading of OP's story.
Sure, and if OP had said that, perhaps we'd be having a different conversation. Or none at all?
EDIT: Ah, maybe you're responding to my remark of it having "nothing to do"? If so, yeah, that's hyperbole. There are similarities if you want to look for them. But I don't think they're meaningful connections for the point of the story and OP's reaction, in my opinion.
The point of the story is that someone tried to strike up a conversation with OP and he responded by effectively saying "your job is loud and obnoxious", and it's presented as if it's a win. It doesn't really seem like one to me.
The comment was not aimed at the carpenter. Nothing he was doing was loud, and nothing I've experienced with carpenters gives me the impression that they are loud or obnoxious. He was doing a great job. If he took what I said as a dig at his profession, that was his connection, not mine.
My take away, after the fact, was that he may have been someone who enjoyed landscaping his own yard and owned several tools that I listed. Nothing to do with his career and services, and nothing that's a reflection of our interaction.
The story wasn't meant to be a win or a competition. It was a reflection on how some people associate some loud sounds, such as motors, as being perfectly fine and other loud sounds, like children at play, being a nuisance.
That's fair enough. But don't you think carpentry could be considered a loud profession, like the other ones you listed? I imagine carpenters as banging nails with hammers all day. :P
Hammering can get loud. But not louder than any motorized tool. And hammering being limited by the energy capacity of flesh and blood doesn't last for long bursts, maybe a few minutes at a time. In contrast, motorized tools let out an egregious, sharp hum that can last for an hour or two without pause. Both might draw someone's attention and frustration, but when comparing them objectively, one is clearly worse than the other.
On top of that, carpentry is done on site and isn't mobile. Someone doing carpentry as a hobby will likely be in a garage or some enclosed space that absorbs and muffles the sound. Carpentry being done professionally is temporary and will stop once the construction is finished. Landscaping, though, is everywhere and without end
I believe you that it was unintentional (and I'm sorry for implying that it was!), but I still think the carpenter was upset because you implicated him. Just to prove I'm not crazy here, I asked GPT as a neutral third party, which agrees:
I cannot wait for these to be banned, please, I hope.
It would cost so little comparative money for construction sites to go battery powered. There's some exemptions that need to be made (welders), but man, I doubt the average construction worker uses 1kWh a week. Battery power that shit, you brutes, and spare the world!
Switching these folks to battery would be such an enormous relief for cities. The cheapest shittiest 2 stroke generators raging from 7am to 4pm is an infernal senseless ceaseless din.
Of course. But we already established that OP struck a nerve. OP themselves said that. And nobody was confused about why they struck a nerve with the carpenter.
But this isn't a conversation about whether or not it was possible to connect from what OP said to "loud noises". We all seem to agree on that. Specifically it's a question of whether OP was targeting the carpenters profession. I can't see how OP did that.
I'm kind of surprised I'm still here arguing this. But hey, it's a slow day and I guess it struck a nerve with me for some reason. Hope you're having a good day too!
I've never seen a carpenter use a lawnmower on the job. Seems unwieldy to drag up a ladder.
On a more serious note, most carpentry tools aren't that bad in terms of noise. They can get loud, but they tend to be momentary, getting a cut done, and back to silence. It's the landscaping companies that are running powered tools right up next to people's houses for 30-40 minutes at a time that are the problem. And by the time one company is done, another arrives and revs their own engines.
As for me ruining his attempt at small talk and insulting his profession... Eh. If someone's idea of small talk is trying to make children appear disrupters of the peace for having fun at camp for 6 weeks out of the year, as children ought to do, I'm not too concerned about making a comment expressing a common and often relatable sentiment that makes that person feel bad about their own disruptions of the peace. To the extent that I "insulted his profession", that was him setting himself up. Don't serve a dish you wouldn't want to eat. He could have made small talk in a hundred different ways or found a way to show appreciation instead of annoyance, but he said what he said, and he set the tone.
Guess we had the same thought, I posted a similar comment. It genuinely threw me for a loop cause I was trying to figure out how OP actually said anything about carpentry...
People buy cheap[er] houses near airports and then try to get airport ops changed/restricted all the time. (I agree with you, but it’s obviously a thing that people have no problem doing.)
Yeah, I hate lawnmowers. I live next to a church/religious school and an apartment building both with a large yard. I don't mind the daily church bells at 6/12/7 but the constant lawn mowing is the worst.
Very based. All the people who try to claim that this is bad social skills apparently just take it from folks in the often scummy trades (i.e. mechanics, dentists, etc when I say scummy) who treat us like shit and make snide comments and backhanded compliments with impunity about us lazy computer users. This is triply true in the post AI era. They hate us cus they aint us.
i think you might be picking up on a level of disdain from others based on your attitude that might not be related to your profession.
we are all extremely lucky to have been born at the right time with the right set of resources to have found work in the information trade. we are not better than mechanics or dentists, and we're often compensated to ridiculous degrees when compared to arguably vital roles like teachers, social workers, therapists, custodial staff, conservation workers, public defenders, farm laborers, and so many other professions.
A few months ago we had a carpenter doing some work on the house, and he was asking me about the camp and living so near to it. Eventually he asked "Are they loud when they play? That must be so annoying. I'd hate that."
I replied "Nah, it's healthy and fun, and it doesn't travel as far as you'd think. The real annoying sounds are all the lawnmowers, weed whackers, and gasoline powered tools that people keep using throughout the summer". He immediately went quiet and sour. Guess I hit a nerve.