Please Stop Beeping

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published August 10, 2026] ©2026

I’m trying to decide when our lives became controlled by beeps. When I was growing up, I don’t remember anything that beeped. Now I can’t think of anything that doesn’t. I’m frankly feeling over-alerted. 

An all-too-popular game in our home between my husband and me is: Name That Beep.  Is it coming from inside the house?  Or is it a trash truck or city vehicle backing up outside?  If it’s inside, did somebody (he knows who he is) forget their coffee cup in the microwave?  Or did I set a timer on the stove for some reason? And, of course, that’s becoming part of the problem.  What reason? Not only figuring out which appliance is beeping, or, if it’s the oven timer, but why I set it in the first place. 

If you’ve got a Smart phone, you know the difference between the email message beep and the text message beep and the “loved your text message reply” beep.  My computer alerts me to new emails as well.

When my husband Olof does the dishes and wipes the digital panel on our stove, it will often start beeping. As an engineer (and, more to the point, a guy), he isn’t about to admit that he has no idea why. While smashing it with a hammer after it had been going off for a half hour seems like a perfectly sane option, he will finally wander into the bedroom and announce, “There’s an incoming message from the Planet Klingon.  I think it’s for you.” 

This range, I should mention, was the only one west of the Mississippi that would fit into our space when our former KitchenAid range crumped during the pandemic.  One of its many negative features is that it is really easy to knock into the burner control knobs when cleaning up after dinner dispersing gas into the air for an entire night.  After the first time that this happened, I invested in a gas detection meter which mysteriously goes off on occasion even when we are just cooking something on low heat on the stove.  Probably unwisely, we’ve learned to ignore it.

Fortunately, our carbon monoxide sensor is much better behaved.  And we would definitely not ignore it.

An increasingly common beep is the low battery signal on the handset of our ancient answering machine. Definitely time to get rid of that thing.

We’ve had to replace most of our appliances in the last five years, and frankly, are not impressed with the alert features that seem to be standard now.  Our refrigerator beeps if the door is left open more than a minute while you’re unloading groceries into it.  Somehow, I managed to go 23 years with the last fridge without that feature and never leave the door open even once.

Our new microwave, alas, just won’t shut up.  It will beep into the next millennium until you remove whatever it was you put into it.  It will not be ignored.

Despite the fact that I have tried to disable as many beeps as possible, I have still managed to add a few.  After the fires in January 2025, my granddaughter, whose LA home came perilously close to burning down, installed Watch Duty on my phone which I think informs me of fires even in Los Angeles.  It goes off multiple times per day. Fortunately, it’s a distinctive sound so I can ignore it with, “OK, just a fire.” 

I feel bad about it, but I’ve disabled the Amber Alert from my phone.  That alert scares the bejesus out of me.  Could they turn that thing down a few hundred decibels?

I also signed up for the Shake Alert which alleges to give one 20 seconds notice of a quake with a magnitude of 4 or greater.  What’s confusing is that we already have this in the form of our aviary birds who give us pretty much the same amount of warning.  Of course, with them, you’re never sure it’s not just a hawk. 

My car beeps when the door isn’t shut tight and seat belts aren’t fastened. One beep I actually don’t mind is the after-market backup sensors I had installed on my 2005 Corolla that beep at me when people with a clear death wish walk behind my car at Gelsons as I am backing up.

There are two beeps that make me truly crazy. One is the beep that your ceiling smoke detectors make when the batteries are running low. Smoke detectors have been scientifically programmed so that those batteries only start failing at 3 a.m. It’s like the faucet drip torture only ten times worse. You want to stand underneath it and scream, “Stop it!  Stop it RIGHT NOW! I’ll get the ladder and change your battery in the morning!” But no, it maliciously beeps on.

To make matters worse, our hallway smoke detector can even be set off by steam from the shower in the adjacent bathroom.  It is disconcerting that it can’t tell the difference between fire and water.

Have we become a country of people who cannot remember anything if it doesn’t beep at us?  Um, yup!  How did we ever survive before? One answer: we obviously didn’t used to have so many gadgets.

Fortunately, some appliances will let you disable the beep alerts. But more often than not, you need an engineering degree and/or a soldering iron. YouTube abounds with videos on this topic.

Should we be relying on beeps less, just to make those ever-aging synapses keep firing? When you look at all those mental gymnastics exercises advocated for older folks, maybe going beeperless should be one of them.  Well, except maybe the ones like smoke alarms that would prevent the house from burning down. 

In the average kitchen, the beeping options are pretty much endless. With so many appliances beeping, will new ones have to start announcing themselves, like “coffee’s ready”?

I hope not. Bad enough that they’re all beeping at me. When they start talking to me, I’m done.  Because I fear I’d start answering.