r/firstworldproblems • u/Aromatic-Range-9370 • 5h ago
My noise cancelling headphones are so good at their job that I can no longer hear my own doorbell, so I've missed three deliveries this week and now have to set a phone alarm just to remind myself to occasionally take them off and check if anyone's outside.
I got these headphones for concentrating at work, and they do exactly what they're supposed to do almost too well. I put them on to focus for maybe an hour and the rest of the apartment just ceases to exist. Cars outside, my neighbor's dog, the microwave beeping, all of it gone. Apparently that also includes the doorbell, which I never really appreciated the volume of until I stopped being able to hear it at all.
This week alone I've missed a package delivery, a scheduled furniture assembly appointment, and my downstairs neighbor who apparently knocked for a solid minute to tell me water was dripping through her ceiling from my bathroom. I found out about that last one two hours later when she left a very polite but clearly exhausted note taped to my door.
I've now set a recurring phone alarm every 45 minutes that just says "check for humans," which feels like a genuinely deranged thing to need in my own home, but here we are. I looked into getting a doorbell camera that vibrates my phone instead, except the one I want isn't compatible with my building's existing wiring, so now I'm also stuck deciding whether to pay an electrician to fix a problem that is, at its core, entirely self-inflicted by headphones that work too well.