How to Deal with Nasty Neighbors?

We've been blessed with obnoxious neighbors.

They live below us and have likely raised booming their repetitive music to an art form: they've caused our apartment and its furnishings to VIBRATE. :-(

You know the volume of someone's music must be high if you can feel vibrations through your computer KEYBOARD, as well as feel vibrations through your SHOES while you're standing in the kitchen and it's being boomed from their bedroom!

One warning from the police--who we haven't called...yet, hasn't scared them from causing further disturbances. Nor have several formal complaints filed by us through the apartment management office dissuaded them.


WHY do people feel the need to blast their noise for the whole world to hear? And to KEEP doing it in retailiation for each complaint lodged against them? It's RUDE, and quite immature, to put it mildly. :-(

We have asked them three times in person to please lower the volume. The first time hubby approached them, they were very hostile, which helped to establish in our minds that these people may be dangerous to deal with.

He was greeted with, "Why do you have to knock on the door like the PO-leece?" (Because you had your music blasting so loud, I had to repeatedly bang on your door, dumbass!) Oh? They know how the police knock on their door, do they?

I think they must regularly fry their noodles with something nasty. Hence, our hesitation to call the cops on them, though we were sorely tempted the other night (we called the office instead); they might have a worse retaliation in mind than annoying us with loud music to vibrate our walls. I've had to deal with druggies before in a customer service setting, next to a subway station no less. They're menacing and unpredictable.

Normal people apologize and try not to disturb their neighbors again. Our neighbors living below us don't give a shit.

I would have liked to have seen their faces when the two "PO-leece" officers knocked on their door a couple of weeks ago! At that moment, their music was blasting through the whole building, probably in response to our third formal complaint. Perfect timing! And it was the maintenance man who called someone to call the police on them. He had even less tolerance for the racket than we did...and he told me he left the front door to the apartment building open so the police could come right in. ;-)

The second time we knocked on their door, a different person answered. Maybe a friend of theirs? He wasn't hostile like the other two, and they DID lower the volume, as it was 1 a.m., way past the 10:30 p.m. deadline for loud noises. The third time--which was after we left a note, the bitch half of the couple answered, and was, of course, hostile. Her gorilla partner is equally unapproachable.

They weren't so bad when they moved in last summer. And they stopped playing loud music late in the evenings last fall. But now, they really just don't give a flying fig, and I'm sure they would dance gleefully if we were to move out in disgust.

However, we've been here nearly five years. Much longer than them.

This evening, when they began to play their game of blasting the same music they've played since last summer, for who knows how long (sometimes its 20-30-40-50 or more minutes), hubby got fed up and left to go the university computer lab to concentrate. I stayed put, feeling indignant, because I believe that WE should not feel compelled to leave our home. WE didn't do anything wrong...they're the ones who are causing unnecessary disturbances.

Besides, I was BOILING inside, intending to write a seething, scathing, vitriolic post on our inconsiderate neighbors!

Wouldn't you know it: they stopped about 10 minutes after hubby left. I emailed him to say they had stopped...for now. He ended up coming home an hour later, before he even read my email. :-)

And now, a new development has occurred this week: construction sounds past 10:30 p.m. Yes! Drilling and hammering! Did they think we needed some variety? :-(

I suppose most everyone has an annoying neighbor, to varying degrees. At present, we're just trying to follow office procedures and build a paper trail, to cover our butts. In our most recent complaint to the apartment management, we stated very clearly that if this matter wasn't resolved within a month, we would begin looking for another community to live in, in our city.

The day after, as expected, the assholes below us had their noise thumping, so we called the office, put the phone receiver to the floor, and let the office staff person share our (almost) daily joy. She was shocked. Then she told us what we could do next, since we called saying we wanted to move.

Write a letter to management stating your intention (moving) and reason (unresolved issue with neighbors), she told us, then management will have you come in for a meeting to negotiate options. Like what? Moving US to another of their apartments? I don't think so! WE are acutely aware of the penalties of leaving before our lease is up; however, they'd better come up with something reasonable or they'll lose a loyal tenant when they're already desperate to fill spaces. And they know it.

We haven't written THE LETTER yet. We're waiting for just the right dramatic moment from the dimwit occupants below us before we pounce on them and management in one lucid letter.

Last fall, hubby blasted some twangy country music he thought they'd likely hate (given the stuff they boom to us), and put the radio speakers toward the floor! I don't think it had much effect on them, since I'm sure they have a much better sound system than we could ever care to have. But it was amusing at the time. :-)

I was thinking I wanted to make up a Top Ten list of ways to annoy your neighbors, in the spirit of David Letterman, but I can't come up with ten things to really irritate the alien invaders who live below us.

Besides, now I'm thinking about a huge billboard I saw on Maryland's eastern shore that quoted the words of Mahatma Ghandi:

An eye for an eye will make the whole world go blind.

Maybe someday somebody can invent a spray that will eliminate obnoxious sounds, the way you can disinfect the air from obnoxious odors!

Wouldn't that be nifty?

Pssft.

Oh, it's quiet and peaceful now, thank God! ;-)