Why do we as a society tolerate loud landscapers?

I’ll give you two corny adages

“You gotta break some eggs if you wanna make an omlette du fromage.”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you.”

“Why do loud landscapers work from 7am to 4pm? Why not 10am to 6pm?”

So they should change their work schedule around as to not annoy you? That’s ridiculous! At 7am, the sun is up, and people who work outside shouldn’t care about whether others are still sleeping, they have a job to do. As someone who has worked outside during hot summer months, I can tell you that the earliest parts of the day are the coolest, and on 100+ degree days, you may only be able to work from around 7am-10am, it’s just too damn hot otherwise.

It’s not like they’re making noise at 2am, when the vast majority of people are sleeping. I’m sure these same people are just as annoyed at people who work late hours, or people who loudly wander back from bars and clubs late at night when they are trying to sleep. Get over it.

Maybe it’s because they are young and hot.~

Generally speaking landscapers make enough noise already to be covered under existing noise ordinances, but those are rarely enforced. The world of lawn care has changed dramatically in the last 20 years from when you hired the neighbor kid to mow your lawn with your lawn mower or his to now when you hire a company that rolls out like a military squadron and uses huge, loud mowers to mow a postage stamp sized lawn, producing excessive pollution and throwing huge amounts of dust everywhere. I hate my neighbor’s lawn service no matter what time they work, but especially when the baby is napping. My god, you have no idea the murderous rage I feel when some Jehovah’s witness rings my doorbell, or someone with a loud muffler goes by, or the lawn service rolls out and wakes my sleeping child. You have no idea how much a parent needs those few hours of quiet.

But really, the question it raises for me is why we allow lawn equipment to operate with no pollution control or noise control equipment whatsoever. Mowers produce far more pollution (and noise) than cars. And when you get to the level of the large riding mowers most lawn services use, excuses about pollution controls and mufflers being large, bulky, and expensive start to ring very hollow.

Because the problem of “loud landscapers” has obviously not been a pressing issue for any majority of the general population. I don’t see the problem – why? – because I’ve never had that problem.

They use noisy equipment because it is what is available and effective.
They work early in the day due to the occurrence of hot summer days and because it is simply productive and proactive.

I encourage you to write your local and national governmental representatives about this obviously harrowing issue because it’s obviously extremely important to you (and few others). Also take a look at the noise ordinances in the area.

@Kraigmo It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, there will be someone sleeping.

In the words of Paul McCartney, ”What does it matter to you / When you got a job to do, you gotta do it well, / you gotta give the other fella hell.”

I agree with you. But in matters of all noise. We have become a world filled with noise pollution. That even goes for my neighbours who thump about at 5am. I think it is the general malady of egocentrasism. I am awake so ????

I hate the noise any time of day, but I do understand getting an early start in the hot weather.
My noise rule at my own home is, “I do nothing noisy before or after 9:00.

They need sunlight to see. if they used bright lights during the evening hours, you would complain about that and the noise they make during your dinnertime.

Many people enjoy sculpted landscapes vs. the wild, out-of-control jungle look. Hence they are willing to put up with the mowers, hedgers, blowers, edgers and mulchers.

Blowers are stupid. They blow. They blow leaves and other compostable stuff somewhere or other and leave it there while deafening both the operator and the neighborhood and using up fossil fuels and creating smoke. Sigh. Remember rakes?

Something about the sound of a distant lawnmower or leafblower is sortof nostalgic for me for some reason.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Well, distant is one thing.

I think part of the difference of opinion on this issue relates to the evolution of the typical American neighborhood. My neighborhood was built in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It is a streetcar suburb, built at the end of a streetcar line, with long blocks and houses very close together. Most of the yard is toward the back, a little less toward the front, and virtually none to the sides of the house. I do not have central air conditioning. Prior to WWII most American neighborhoods were like this. Even after WWII most neighborhoods had fairly small lots. Newly built neighborhoods, especially from the 70s on, have bigger and bigger lot sizes, and almost all new homes are built with central air.

If you live in a house that with a large yard, you need bigger equipment to mow that yard, and when your neighbors house with a similar sized yard is mowed, most of the time the equipment is pretty far from your house. Meanwhile your windows are all closed and your air conditioner is running to keep the house cool.

In my neighborhood there is no earthly reason for anything more than a push or walk behind mower and an electric weed eater to maintain a yard. But the lawn companies already have this expensive equipment, including a zero turn radius riding mower that can finish a yard quickly, but unfortunately creates a lot of mess that has to be cleaned up with the gas powered blowers. Meanwhile, they are always within fifty feet or so of my house, which has its windows open to keep it relatively cool, and so all the pollution, dust, and noise come right into my living room. There I sit on the couch and at times the gas powered lawn equipment is no more than twenty feet from me while I try to read a book, take a nap on the couch, or watch TV while the baby naps upstairs, also with the window open and only another twenty feet from the equipment.

So basically, since I don’t have central air and a third to an acre of land, I just have to suck it up and suffer for not being more conventional.

Encourage your neighbors to raise sheep on their lawns. Or to grow pine trees and let the needles “landscape” the ground and choke off the growth of all grass. Or to plant wildflowers instead of grass. Or to all mow their lawns on the same dates and at the same times. Or move to a mountain, desert, city or island where lawns aren’t an issue.

Or you could, you know, just get over it. The world doesn’t actually revolve around you. It’s always tough to learn that, but better when you do.

Offer to do the work yourself. Then you’ll have control over the time.
You will get exercise, a little money, and gain an appreciation for what they are going through every day.

I think it’s also interesting that people seem to be saying that all this has to do with the people doing the work. Yes, I’m sure the guy running the lawn service is so concerned with the well being of his underpaid immigrant work force. What he’s concerned about is making the process as fast as possible so that he can do more lawns per hour of paid wages.

I used to work night shift and this was a big problem for me. I’m not sure there’s an alternative, though. I definitely agree with @susanc that the blowers are unnecessary. They eat fuel and create air pollution. The noise they make is particularly annoying to me because they’re not constantly running, but on for a few seconds, off for a few seconds, then on then off. It’s like the rhythm of stop and go traffic and it’s hard to sleep through, or concentrate through (if you are at home during the day as many of us are). It’s also difficult for children to nap with the disturbance. Maybe it would be less irritating if it was a more constant streaming noise rather than on again off again. My problem is more with the equipment than the workers themselves. You’d think someone would’ve created a quieter tool by now. Oh well.

Still, as I said before, I don’t know what else they could do to solve the problem. The grass needs to be cut and the leaves need to be cleared.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard It would be nice if these sounds were “distant.”

To answer the broader question posed by “Why do we as a society tolerate [name your poison here]?”

It’s because “we as a society” have decided that some things (thank god) are best left more or less un-legislated, or we’d need to read* “today’s rulebook” every day of our lives, as soon as we got up in the morning (or early afternoon, or evening, whatever—we’d probably legislate that, too).

*Or have explained to us.

Because it sucks working in the hot sun at 4:00pm and people like having nice looking yards.

I mean, I’d like to live doctor, but you cutting me open with a scalpal sounds irritating… could you go do that somewhere else?

Sometimes it’s okay to live with a minor inconvenience to recieve a major reward. A good looking, well taken care of neighborhood does more than look good. It creates a well-defined place that the people who live in it think is worth caring about and they will continue caring about it. It’s not going to kill you to deal with the sound of a leaf blower.

Leaf blowers are the bane of all that is good in this world.

^YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Warning: lost-temper alert.

What the bloody hell is all this faux-p.c. lecturing about how the world doesn’t “revolve around” people who’d love to see mostly-recently-immigrated lawn guys using quiet, unpolluting tools and getting paid for more hours?
Sometimes fluther richochets me out of my fantasy that all us “liberals” are intelligent and goodhearted.

@susanc…PC?

@susanc… “liberals… intelligent and goodhearted”?

@noyesa yeah, the p.c. finger-wagging about how something someone would like indicates self-centeredness. “Get over it”/“The world doesn’t revolve around you”/“The world doesn’t actually revolve around you” (different person).
@CyanoticWasp the mythology that flutherers are mostly knee-jerk liberals, who pride themselves/ourselves on our
good judgement, fair-mindedness, community values, etc. Pfah. So not true.

@susanc Not really understanding how that has anything to do with political correctness.

I think it’s kind of insulting to generalize fluther users as knee-jerk liberals who pride themselves on their good judgment, fair-mindedness, community values, etc as much as they are people who pride themselves on their good judgment, fair-mindedness, community values, etc.

I don’t understand how it ties into this discussion. Just because we’re “liberal” we’re supposed to be nice to people who complain about having to hear a lawn mower before 9am? One generally does not follow the other.

I don’t like hearing leaf blowers and power mowers at any time of day. The earlier it is, the more it annoys me.

I am allowed to experience annoyance; my feelings do not have to be outlawed because someone has a job to do.

However, I do not subscribe to an entitlement theory that says I must be protected from all adverse feelings. The fact that I am annoyed does not necessarily mean that someone else has to change what he or she does.

By the same token, people have to put up with being a little “offended” now and then and not cry out for protection from anything that goes against their highly refined political and cultural sensibilities. Fair is fair.

I would also like to know how the guys who don’t mind leaf blowers at 7 a.m. would like it if I played back a tape recording of that noise right beneath their bedroom windows at 1:00 in the morning.

I think @susanc‘s point is based on the fact that some conservatives on Fluther sometimes feel the need to point out that we’re all a bunch of bleeding heart liberals and they’re an oppressed minority. Note the emphasis. Of course there are actually quite a few conservatives and libertarians on Fluther who hold their own quite well.

In general the argument against regulating the lawn care business is a libertarian one (though it isn’t so extreme that it takes an actual libertarian to espouse it) while the argument that lawn care should be regulated is one that is usually expected from us bleeding heart liberals, however extreme it might be.

And finally, I was surprised by, but actually like her assessment of what’s PC in this case. Politically correct means that if you espouse an opposite position publicly as a politician, you are going to have a hard time defending it and getting re-elected. In this case, regulating lawn care would probably be a highly unpopular and politically difficult position. Leaving it alone would be the politically correct position. PC is not always liberal, and it’s not always about discrimination.

thank you @Snarp. You saved me the trouble of explaining this – and it sure is roundabout… but I did mean it.

Actually I don’t know if lawn care should be regulated, but I do bemoan the capitalistic nature of our society that allows the lawncare company boss to buy one of these noxious machines which don’t even take the leaves away, they only displace them, instead of a) giving the workin man more hours and b) composting. I don’t know where that places me on the political spectrum. In the classical sense, I’d call it “conservative”, but many idiots would misunderstand that, so I won’t bother.

I rake my leaves and lawn debris with a nice quiet rake. Then I compost them.
I never blow them. I hate that noise.

People tolerate things because they are simply too lazy to do something about it. There are noise regulations in most places, but most people would rather complain than notify the authorities.

I think leaf blowers symbolize what’s wrong with America; why are we blowing leaves into the street or our neighbors’ yards instead of vacuuming them up and composting them? Out of sight, out of mind, right? If it’s not in my yard, why would I care where it goes?

I love you, wilma. That’s what I’d do too if I weren’t so bone lazy – I just run the gas-hog lawnmower over the leaves that are lying around on the lawn and they compost down that way.
But I love you, I do.

@susanc Thanks :)

@Jeruba Were you in earnest when you offered to do the 1:00 AM thing?

They sell really good ear plugs at Walmart, they are about $2.50 for a box of 10 pair, which should last you for about 2 months if you keep your ears clean, buy some.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities, @cbloom8, and @noyesa all mentioned the hot weather which is a valid point.

But… why do these same landscapers continue to rise at 5am in the coldest winter mornings to make their racket. At that point, it really is insanity isn’t it? Not only are they making noise when the sun’s barely up, but they themselves are working in the freezing cold, when it would be much more comfortable later in the day for all.

@Kraigmo
Well, I hesitate to stereotype, but lots of landscapers are recent immigrants, if only because you don’t have to have your language skills perfected to get good money as a lawn guy. And most recent immigrants are VERY MOTIVATED to achieve the American dream many of us may have learned to take for granted. So:
early to bed
early to rise
makes a man healthy
wealthy!
and…
wise