Teen Asks Family to Start Waking Him Up for Work After Constantly Oversleeping, but Brother Refuses to ‘Have That Responsibility’

Getting out of bed for work isn’t always easy — but one young man says it shouldn’t become someone else’s responsibility.

In a Reddit post, a 22-year-old explained that his 18-year-old brother has always been an “extremely tight sleeper.” According to him, even their parents struggled to wake the teenager, often shaking him without much success.

That problem hasn’t gone away with age. The younger brother regularly sleeps through his alarm, and even though the siblings have separate bedrooms, the noise is loud enough to be heard throughout the house.

“Even though we sleep in separate rooms, I could still hear it and would have to go into his room to get him to turn it off,” the older brother wrote.

Last year, the teenager landed a retail job he genuinely enjoys and has built friendships with his coworkers. Recently, however, he’s been late to work multiple times — something that could eventually cost him the job.

The issue, the poster explained, isn’t that his brother never wakes up. Instead, he wakes briefly when the alarm sounds and then falls back asleep.

While the older brother admitted that oversleeping can happen occasionally, he said things crossed a line when his brother asked him to start checking on him every morning to make sure he stayed awake.

“I refused to do this,” he wrote. “If he wants to play the ‘closing your eyes after your alarm goes off’ game, that’s on him. I’m not going to be there to wake him up.”

He also worried that agreeing would turn into an ongoing obligation — and that he’d be blamed if his brother was late again.

“If I were to agree, he’d probably start blaming me if he ends up being late again,” he explained. “I refuse to have that responsibility when he is an adult now.”

Their mother, however, saw it differently. She suggested it would be a “nice thing” to do, pointing out that the older brother is already awake and moving around in the mornings.

That comment made him second-guess himself.

“Truth be told, when his alarm goes off, I usually try to go back to sleep,” he wrote. “But maybe she has a point about it being common courtesy to do a simple check.”

Looking for outside perspectives, he turned to Reddit — where most commenters backed him up.

Many agreed that waking up on time is ultimately the younger brother’s responsibility. Some suggested practical solutions, such as placing the phone or alarm clock across the room so he’s forced to get out of bed to shut it off.

Others pointed out that the issue might be rooted in poor sleep habits or even a medical concern.

“There may be a medical reason for this,” one commenter wrote. “More likely, he’s staying up too late, probably on his phone. That needs to change. He needs enough sleep hours.”

Another commenter echoed the concern about responsibility, warning that taking on the role of human alarm clock could easily backfire.

“You are correct,” they wrote. “If you accept this responsibility, it becomes your fault. If he’s having that much trouble waking up, he needs to change his habits or see a doctor.”

In the end, most agreed: learning to wake up on time is part of growing up — and a lesson best learned sooner rather than later.