The Official Pain in the %$!! Neighbor Thread

[margecat]

I've been lucky to have very nice neighbors so far. I only had an issue with a guy who likes to walk his dog on my side lawn, and lets the dog urinate and defecate on it, and thinks it's funny. He no longer does, as last Summer, I had a little, shall we say, chat with him while this was happening; he no longer even walks on our side of the street, and keeps his head down, and doesn't even look at our house!

(When I confronted him, he seemed to think his behavior with the dog was ok, and he told me go go to H*ll; I promptly
suggested he engage in an activity that would be physically impossible, but most men would love to be able to do when lonely). I had no problem with the dog itself, just him--the dog knows no better.

I feel your pain with the cell phone issue--the neighbors in back of us (never met them, nor talked to them yet) do this. They have a Nextel phone, and they use it outside, so I hear that $##$$% beep, then the other person, AND the neighbor's conversation. What a treat. I call it "Nextel H*ll."

 

[jugen]

We recently moved from the neighborhood from h#@* into a wonderful neighborhood. The new one has older people most of whom are retired with one exception, a younger couple that live a few houses down. They are respectful here and never make very much noise. Even the kids are respectful and quiet after a certain time.
The other neighborhood was good for awhile, but eventually it grew to be intolerable. Our bedroom was close to the neighbors front porch and the street, and everynight they'd be partying, fighting or whatnot out on it. So no matter what time we'd go to bed, there was always something outside to deal with in the summer. There were times I'd be wishing for winter so they'd just stay inside. It was intolerable. Just because they didn't have jobs didn't mean that we didn't right? But they didn't care, and would do whatever, whenever and if you'd say something to them or about them and they'd find out, your property was at risk. They egged the other neighbors house for what I'm not sure but he was out cleaning it up one day and we all knew who it was, just couldn't prove it. So that combined with other reasons drove us out of that area.

 

[littleraven7726]

Our bad neighbors all moved out this summer.

bad neighbor #1: lived on the second floor of our building (there are 3 floors) and had a large dog that barked at

everything.

I'm so glad they moved. They had a kitty when they moved in, but I have a feeling kitty was rehomed when they had their baby last winter. Their dog is a time bomb anyway...can you say fear aggression? It lunged after me when I was walking down the stairs a few months ago and the stupid owner thought it was funny. It was always barking growling and snarling from their patio door at passersby.

bad neighbor #2: our building is 30+ years old and apparently the smells from the apartment below us will come in through our heating ducts. The neighbor was a chain smoker.

We had the apartment maintenance in here numerous times to fix it, but you could *still* smell it. No sympathy from mainentance or management--they all smoked.

Anyway we were so happy when he moved out.

Our new neighbor occasionally plays loud thumpy music, but you can't hear it in our bedroom and she doesn't play it all night. Bonus--she doesn't smoke in her apartment!

I just hope we don't get any more neighbors with dogs. Why do people let their dogs bark and bark and bark when they are home in the apartment????? I can understand the occasional bark, but not constantly.

 

[isadora44]

Originally Posted by littleraven7726

bad neighbor #2: our building is 30+ years old and apparently the smells from the apartment below us will come in through our heating ducts. The neighbor was a chain smoker.

We had the apartment maintenance in here numerous times to fix it, but you could *still* smell it. No sympathy from mainentance or management--they all smoked.

Anyway we were so happy when he moved out.

We have the same problem in our condo. One of our neighbors smokes a lot and the smell comes in through both our upstairs and downstairs bathroom vents AND our dryer vent. It's so lovely to come home to a house smelling like cigarette smoke....

I know it's because our vent, and probably the others, just vent up to the attic and not all the way through the roof. I know my neighbors have a right to suck on their cancer sticks, so my husband and I are trying to brainstorm ways to seal our vents from the other condos.

 

[carolpetunia]

I've never understood why some people think it's all right to invade their neighbors' privacy with noise.

I don't much mind kids yelling while they play, and I don't mind dogs barking unless it's during the night -- but there is no time, ever, when I can tolerate the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of the neighbor's stereo!

I will close my windows, my blinds, and my drapes, and I will run fans in every room of the house to try to cover the noise. I do not feel, however, that I should have to turn on my stereo if I don't want to listen to music at that moment. Maybe I'm trying to read, or sleep, or just have some simple peace and quiet... and that should be possible in my own home.

I actually bought a couple of white-noise machines, in addition to the fans, to try to defend myself against outside noise... so I've gone to some lengths to avoid conflicts.

But if all my efforts are not enough, if the neighbors have their music up so loud that it overwhelms all that -- then I feel they are clearly in the wrong. They're forcing their music on me, and there's no justification for that. It isn't necessary to play music so loud that it gets broadcast to the neighbors -- if you can't enjoy it at a reasonable volume, use headphones.

Can you tell this is a hot button for me?

 

[kuntrykitty]

[font= "Comic Sans MS"]I feel extremely fortunate to live 30 miles out of civilization and on a 2.5 mile dirt road. No honking, traffic, loud people, loud music, no polution, nothing. I can open my windows at night and sleep withthe birds chriping softly, the kitties outside playing, my radio playing softly, the cool fresh breeze in my face. I could NEVER ever live in the city, I would go insane!!! The only problem we've ever had with neighbors is when we lived back in Texas and we were on a party line. Those of ya'll who don't know what that is, it's a connected phoneline. It's like having two phones in your house, and talking on the phone, and your sibling picks up the other phone and can hear your conversation. Different phone numbers, but the same line. Basically, if you were on the phone, they would drop if whenever they wanted to whether you gave them permission or not. They answered our phone all the time, because their phone rang whenever it was for us, but we didn't have that problem. The worst part was, I had a "Triangular Friendship" with me, a girl named Adrienne, and Mayle, who was the neighbor girl. The latter, was not very nice. The kind of girl who if you said, "Yeah, she can be a little controlling, but she's nice" would take it like "She's a TOTAL FREAK, I HATE HER!" I'd be talking to my cousin or whatever and you could tell when she picked up the phone, and would just LISTEN and say nothing! I'd finally say, "Mayle, can you put down the phone please?" and she'd huff and slam it down. Jodi, the Mom did this also, even when my Mom was speaking to family or a friend or even a business call, they'd just listen. But sometimes we'd be on the phone and Jodi or Mayle would just start joining in on the conversation!!!

It was like you had no privacy on the phoneline! These neighbors also lived 40 miles away, on the neighboring ranch, but knew everything about the ranch business because they took our "messages". They were like our secretary or something... Nosy neighbors.... they were so rude about it too...

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[gemlady]

We seem to have good neighbors now. One man who grew up down the road bought the house next door and will mow our side yard and sometimes our front yard as a thank you for not selling out to a developer. (That meant his house was more affordable.)

But - past neighbors from heck include the family of 10 who lived in a 4 room house with a path. When we had family picnics in our yard the kids would stand at the fence and stare. If they had a treat they'd also stand at the fence and eat it in front of us.

On the other side - they were okay most of the time but we go a bit miffed when his pig or cows would get loose and stampede over our extensive beds of daylilies. There was one snowy March 17 the cows got loose and the neighbor and 2 members of the county sheriff's department chased them all over our yard - sending several new expensive plants to plant heaven.

Across the road was one family with a big dog I knicknamed Leatherlungs. He once barked for 3 hours straight after we came home one evening. He also would run to the road and bark at me - once was followed by the little lap dog almost into the road in front of a car! I called the family and told them. I hate to say this, but when I heard he had been hit and killed, I was not sorry. The family there now has 2 dogs that bark at us, but at least they stay in the yard due to the hidden fence system (which is no good after a lengthy power failure.)