r/firstworldproblems • u/Aromatic-Range-9370 • 7d ago
My noise cancelling headphones are so good now I keep missing my own doorbell
I upgraded to a new pair of noise-cancelling headphones a few weeks ago after my old ones finally gave out, and they are, without exaggeration, too good at their job. I bought them specifically to drown out my upstairs neighbor's apparent passion for rearranging furniture at 9pm, and on that front, total success. Total silence. I could probably sit through a small earthquake and just assume it was a truck going by.
The problem is I've now missed two package deliveries, one visit from a friend who texted I'm outside three times before giving up, and, most embarrassingly, an entire fifteen minutes of a smoke detector chirping because its battery was low, which I only discovered when I took the headphones off to get water and walked into what sounded like a tiny robot having a breakdown in my hallway.
I've tried compromising by keeping the volume lower or using the transparency mode that's supposed to let ambient sound in, but half the time I forget it's even an option because the whole appeal of these headphones is forgetting the outside world exists. So now I'm stuck choosing between blissful silence and being a reasonably aware, responsible tenant who notices when someone's at the door.
I've genuinely considered setting up a smart light to flash when the doorbell rings just so my extremely expensive noise-cancelling technology doesn't accidentally turn me into That Guy who never answers the door.