A tragic tale of one woman, one vacuum, and a board with too much time and not enough common sense.
Once upon a floorboard, I made a decision so controversial, so socially disruptive, it shook the very underpinnings of condominium life: I removed the carpet.
Yes. I uncovered the original flooring. The same type of floor found in dozens of other units throughout this noble 50-year-old relic of a building. But unlike the other uncarpeted folk, I had the audacity to be… alive. And what’s worse, moderately active. Sometimes I walked. Sometimes I vacuumed. Sometimes – brace yourself – my dog played with a toy.
Enter: President Bite Barker, a man whose ears are apparently fine-tuned to detect the exact location of every socked footstep, dog yawn, and Dyson hum within a 100-metre radius. What followed was not dialogue – no, no. That would require maturity. Instead, they ordered an acoustical assault.
The Sound Study was unleashed. Translation: A study that doesn’t tell you how loud I am – it tells you how sound travels through the floor. And guess what? That transmission level is the same in every unit with original flooring. It’s like testing gravity and then acting surprised when apples fall down.
But did they test the other units with original floors? Of course not. That would require consistency. Logic. Basic decency. No, only I was tested. Because I’m not just a person in a condo – I’m The Chosen One. The one to be policed, measured, scrutinized.
So here we are. The board insists they’re “just following procedure,” which is code for “we made up a process to justify harassing someone we don’t like.”
I alone was summoned to the Noise Tribunal of the Damned. I alone had to host the Sound Technicians of Doom.
Because I am me: disabled, outspoken, and apparently in need of disciplinary acoustical enlightenment.
This was never about the floor. If it were, the building would be a giant laboratory of sound studies. The goal wasn’t to solve a problem, because there was no problem, no noise; it was to declare me the problem. This was about creating a paper trail to justify targeting someone they wanted silenced. My footsteps became political. My vacuum cleaner, a weapon of mass disruption. My dog toy? A war crime in foam and rubber.
And the best part? After all that? The test showed that there was nothing out of the ordinary here. But naturally, no apology followed. Just the eerie silence of a board desperately trying not to admit they spent money to confirm gravity still works.
So, here’s to the legendary Bite Barker and the Board of Selective Enforcement. May their carpets be forever damp, their noise studies forever inconclusive, and their logic… acoustically flawed.
Because here, in this bastion of selective enforcement, some of us are simply born to be heard… and punished for it.
Disclaimer: This post is satire and opinion. Read full disclaimer.
