Last fall my upstairs neighbor was a professional D.J. who played house music constantly - he’d work nights, come home, party, and start practicing at 8:00 in the morning on his two giant turntables. He had the sexual prowess of 10 men, judging from the constant squeaks and high pitched moans emanating from his partners. It was annoying to live downstairs from him, but he was a nice guy. We had his phone number and could call up to tell him to keep it down, and he would immediately comply.
This spring he was replaced by a young family with a toddler and an infant. We were ecstatic! No more booming house music at all hours, no more screaming sexathons, just nice normal people! Oh, how wrong we were. First of all, for the entire month of April, they moved furniture across the floor, back and forth, back and forth, round and round, round and round, leaving us to scream ineffectually at the ceiling. They still do this from time to time.
Also, their toddler gets up at 6 or 6:30 a.m. each day and runs as hard and fast as he can back and forth across the apartment until he gets tired. He does this throughout the day and evening. It is LOUD and very irritating - this Sunday, hung over from ChiDope, I would have cheerfully tied him to a chair to make him stop running.
My roommate has talked to the upstairs neighbors - she works evenings and especially needs her early a.m. zzzzzzs. She told them that Junior’s running sounds very loud in our apartment, especially early in the morning. She asked very politely if they could stop him from running around say, before 8:00 a.m. Could they remove his shoes when he’s in the house. Could they think about getting carpeting for the areas where he runs. She also suggested that they maybe confine his running to the top floor of their apartment (the master bedroom suite), especially in the morning.
They apologized for the problem, but there has been no change in the behavior. My roommate followed up with a note one day when it was particularly bad, but still, every single morning, starting at 6 or 6:30, the kid is stomping back and forth across the apartment, wearing shoes, on hardwood floors. We now realize that OF COURSE they don’t want him running on the third floor - because that’s where THEY are trying to sleep.
They are family friends of the landlord, and we don’t want to alienate them or him - we love our apartment and they could make our lives difficult. We are also afraid that the rare times we have people over or turn the music up they will retaliate on us.
So what do we do to stop the running? Give them an idea of when we’re gone during the day and it’s safe for the kid to run? Knock on their door every single time it bothers us? Call the cops and report a “disturbance”? I was thinking of inviting the woman down to our apartment during a running episode so she can hear how loud it is. I don’t think they are horrible people, maybe just clueless. All ideas welcome.