Saturday morning, enjoying a rare sleep-in and the house begins to rumble. It sounds like a WWII tank is outside, taking aim. It’s 6:15 am and there is no way anyone within a block radius is sleeping through it.
It’s a landscaping company with some sort of pavement-cleaning machine that looks like tiny tank, zig-zagging across a parking lot at the corner of our road and the next cross street. A guy with a leaf blower followed the driver on foot, sending clouds of dust and junk into the grass median. My hearing isn’t great and it was too loud for my liking.
Being in media has its advantages. I know that there’s a bylaw in London that says you can’t make this kind of noise before 7 am, Monday to Saturday, and before 9 am on Sunday. Furious, I called the company and asked the answering service to have a manager call me back. I looked forward to him being woken up at such a ridiculous hour.
He sounded about twenty-something and had zero empathy for the situation his workers caused. “The building pays us to do it, lady, and it’s the only time the parking lot is empty.” Really, I asked, it wouldn’t still be empty after 7, like the law says? “Calm down, Ma’am”, he said dismissively, “it’s not like we’re doing this TO you.” Well, actually you are, said I, and you’ll be knee-deep in shit once I file an official complaint. “Go ahead”, said the manager, “we only do it once a year anyway.”
And that’s how they get away with it.
You can do anything you want if you only do it once in a while. Spray poison on your lawn that’s banned in Ontario but available south of the border and get caught? Go for it. By the time anybody finds out, the chemicals will be doing their thing anyway and you’ll have what you wanted. Park illegally and hold up traffic? No problem. All of those people behind you will eventually get around, and if anyone makes a call, you’ll be long gone before the authorities arrive.
These bylaws have no teeth. It’s lovely that a bunch of councillors sat in a room and agreed on the rules but enforcement is a whole other issue.
I took my story to Twitter and some folks in my neighbourhood said the noise woke them up, too. Others shared their frustrations with trying to get companies to play within the rules. Getting woken up on a Saturday isn’t going to ruin my life or even my day, but there was just no good reason for it, other than a landscape company whose name rhymes with Tender Lawn Care, or TLC, wanting to bring in a few hundred dollars. It’s the lack of any shred of empathy that bothers me. Even if he had just said, look, I’m really sorry but it’s the only time we can get it done. But he didn’t. If I knew where he lived, I would wake him up on my way to work at 3:30 am and when questioned, just shrug my shoulders and say, hey, it’s only once a year.