For a bit of background I am recovering from a nervous breakdown I had last year, suffer from terrible anxiety and stay up all night due to both these things.
The only reason I mention the above points is that since I am a bit of a mess currently I question myself often, hence this post.
I live in a block of flats. The flats are in the same complex as some houses. All of this faces out on one side to a large car park. The car park is lined with trees and there is a cathedral behind the trees.
At the start of the summer (ish) the car park was turned into a covid testing site. Three different groups have been in charge of it and every time new people arrived they would have cars and vans with the engines running literally all day. When asked to turn the engines off the response was always "it's my job and covid is bad". So everyone had to complain to the council and the next day, lo and behold, the genius move of not having several cars running all day every day was implemented without any huge effort necessary on the part of the testing site.
Just FYI I'm not a fussy person who complains constantly but it was impossible to go on the balcony or have the windows open because the fumes got so bad.
So around a month ago a huge NHS testing site was set up in the car park. It is staffed 24/7. Now, I'm not going to say I was thrilled by this but just got on with it. I even get on with some of the people who work there and will go out on the balcony for a chat if I see someone I've got to know.
Yet again from day one there have been cars with their engines running, all day and now all night as well. When a neighbor, not me, politely asked the staff to look into not doing this he got the standard "it's my job mate, covid". So again, had to make it official (another person was in charge of this, not me) and again with obvious resentment engines were turned off.
The site has huge floodlights that originally were left on all night. One, you can see in the pic. One points towards the trees and there is another one right near the windows of the flats. After pressure from residents all but the one light that faces away were turned off after 10pm. This did not leave the site dark, there are lots of other smaller lights around it.
Last night there were two new security guards. They parked two cars right under my window, with the engines running talking loudly and slamming the doors over and over again all fucking night. They left all the floodlights on all night.
When it got light and the day shift of people started to arrive all the floodlights were still on. It's difficult to explain how when something is constant it gets really annoying. I waved and called out to one guy who initially did his best to ignore me. Eventually he deigned to acknowledge me.
I said politely, "does that light (pointing to the one shining into my face) need to be on."
"Yes."
"The two shining towards us are normally off at 10pm, they get turned on in the afternoon when it's dark."
"It's always been on"
"I live here and I can assure you it gets turned off."
"No, it doesn't."
"..have you been here before?"
"No."
"So you've not been here, and I have and you're telling me the light was on when I'm telling you it was off."
"Yes."
His whole attitude was extremely surly. I told him he was being rude. He said he didn't think he was. I told him he was clearly too ignorant to understand that he was being rude and fucked off inside.
The lights got switched off and now (8pm) they are off, alot earlier than usual. So I guess the message got passed on.
What fucks me off is not that there have been problems. It's that its never just as simple as saying:
"Hey, how about not running that car engine outside someone's window 24/7."
"Seems reasonable!"
I'm now just worried I came across like a mad bitch and I'm feeling nervous about seeing the same guy over and over again for the next few months which is how long the site will be here. I didn't have my glasses on and the guy was very nondescript so actually I wouldn't recognise him if I spoke to him again. There were lots of other people stood around staring at me when I lost my rag.
Was I being unreasonable?