I don’t have a problem with dogs per se (though I’m definately a cat person) but these people just should not own the things. They let them run loose and become nuisances, getting hit by cars in the meantime. They don’t take good care of them either. They own a wonderful golden retriever right now who is always running loose. Last week was the first time I’d seen her clean almost since they got her–her fur had been clipped. And she has been hit by cars.
At least they keep their other dog tied, but that happened only after he started attacking people. I’ve heard from them that they don’t trust him.
How 'bout the jackasses who block your driveway when parking on the street?
I’m the only person on the block who has a driveway. Everyone else parks on the street, with varying degrees of success. It’s a wide enough street to be a four-lane, designed so cars could park along it, leaving room for both-ways traffic.
My neighbor (yes, the talkative one, so you see why I don’t speak to her about this-- it would take at least three hours) parks her car up on the sidewalk. She once complained to me that a cop ticketed her for this, but persists in doing it. Her kids, who have shiny new bass-mobiles, decked out with spoilers and flashy rims, have taken to doing the same.
I wouldn’t really mind so much if they restricted this activity to the area in front of their own house. It wouldn’t be that difficult. Her yard is wide enough to comfortably park three or four cars without interfering with the neighbors on either side.
However, the neighbor kids seem to think they always have to park behind their mother’s car, like a row of obedient ducklings. If she (inexplicably) parks at the edge of my driveway, they line up right behind her when they come home, completely blocking my access. If her car is not there, they will pull up to where they should be, but if her car is there, they’ll park right behind it no matter where it is.
Luckily, I live within walking distance to my workplace, so that’s never been a problem. I dread speaking to her so much that I actually once called my grandmother to come pick me up and take me to an appointment when the driveway was blocked.
There’s only one thing, the couple that lives above us has these weird, extended conversations that take place right outside our door. I don’t understand why they pause exactly outside our door to have them instead of having them in their apartment or outside the building, it seems they cannot walk and talk at the same time.
They don’t yell, but they are so close to our door they could pretty much be IN our apartment, because we hear every word of such fascinating conversations as:
Should We Take the Subway Or The Bus? (discuss various route options, travel times, etc)
Let’s Try To Remember To Pick Up Some Coffee On The Way Home, We’re Almost Out Of Coffee (discuss where is the best place to get the coffee, if any other groceries are needed, etc)
Do You Think I Should Go Back To Get A Sweater? (discuss how warm/cold it is likely to be, which sweater would be ideal, etc)
I am always tempted to throw in my two cents (Yes, it’s supposed to get colder, take a sweater!) but so far I have managed to refrain. Other than that, they are decent neighbors.
Once, neighbors on each side of us spray-painted their houses very similar colors in the same week. There was overspray all over our vehicles, and each one claimed to not be the guilty party. I can’t recall if we pursued both neighbor’s insurance companies, or just turned a claim in to our own, but, sheesh!
The neighbor on one side has also thrown his dog’s poop into a big pile in our yard, hoping we wouldn’t notice. The wife once stuck her nose in our business & took it upon herself to call my stepdaughter (who hates me) & ask her why my husband was being taken away in an ambulance. I’m dealing with a crisis, and the next thing I know, I’m getting snotty phone calls at the hospital about what a bitch I am for not calling her immediately.
The neighbor on the other side has knocked down the our fence (actually, the boneheads he hired did - but he didn’t even apologize, and was a real douchebag about it). He also has a habit of having loud parties out on his back deck in the summer until very late, and his back deck is within earshot of our bedroom window. Once, when they were having a drunken bachelor party at 1:30am, I finally had had enough, and went out to ask him to quiet down. Of course, this met with less-than-spectacular results. Ever since then, they’ve been our mortal enemies: they sweep their sidewalk of leaves, and deposit them in front of our mailbox. Ooooh, they really show me!
We also have a “nosy Mrs. Kravitz” across the street, but she’s not as bad in comparison.
Where to begin …
The rednecks who rent the house behind me. I’ve nicknamed them the Scruffies. Bonfires (real blazes that a satellite could probably see, not dinky campfires) in a city. The FD has been called a couple of times – they weren’t happy (tough). Bonfires usually accompany parties with several redneck-mobiles parked all akimbo, screaming fights, people peeing on other people’s garages, etc. My other neighbor watched one night and said one couple was fornicating in the backyard next door (the property is abandoned). After seeing the Scruffies in daylight, I don’t want to think about it . . .
But they are better than the young guy who lived there before and bred Pit Bulls for fighting. Three pathetic, slathering chained dogs outside – but I heard through the shelter that when they removed those dogs, they found a basement full of pups (dead and alive), and a dead mother dog who had given birth in an abandoned car he had parked in the garage. Made me want to puke. We had no idea what he was up to until the cops and animal control swarmed the house.
Another neighbor is on disability for a psychological condition, so I cut her some slack. She sticks her nose into everyone’s business and makes up stories about the other neighbors. But worse, she has two dogs that are part terror and part paranoid – when she lets them out, they come flying out the back door (which is next to my bedroom) barking like maniacs. At 2 a.m., then again at about 4 a.m. I think they’re afraid of outside or something.
Everybody else is cool – even the lady across the street who spends hours sitting on the porch smoking and staring into space. Same place, same time. Very zen.
We are blessed with good neighbors. The only complaint I have is that our neighbors to the west put their miniature Schnauzer out in the yard a couple times a day, and the little bastard will not shut up. The sound of his schnauzing greatly agitates my three dogs, and several other dogs from the neighborhood also respond to the yelps and yikes of the neighbor’s dog. It’s a chain reaction.
Our next door neighbor is the NICEST guy in the freaking world, but his ex-wife was a lunatic. (This isn’t the same one who mowed over the dogshit on the lawn). She road her motorcycle through our backyard a few times, just to cause a big scene. My mother just ignored her, because she absolutely adored to fight, and was constantly trying to goad people into confronting her.
My biggest problem used to be neighbors coming home after the bars close, flicking the stereo on LOUD, and then apparently passing out, leaving the music to thump the remainder of the night (or morning, actually). Thankfully that doesn’t happen in this building. Nor does anyone throw all-night poker and beer parties, or if they do, they’re quiet about it. My biggest problem here is the trash chute; people either put their crap next to it instead of in it (I’ve found mice playing in the piles), or they put things in it they shouldn’t (bundles of clothing, large cardboard boxes, furniture) and jam it.
My apartment overlooks the building dog run, and I don’t understand people who think the dog run at midnight is a suitable place for dog training. People are trying to sleep or study or whatever all around the courtyard, and there’s somebody snapping “Sit! SIT!” at some poor dog. Regardless of the hour, why do you want your dog to Sit! SIT! where every other dog in the complex has already peed and crapped?
Oh, and the courtyard is not the best place for animated conversation (with or without a cell phone) unless you don’t mind sharing your business with the entire building. There’s a nice lobby past the doors, people, with sofas and everything. Take it inside.
We just moved, so we’re still in the learning process with the new neighbors and sadly (for this thread anyway) they are all so freaking nice.
But, the kid across the street insists that he must park his car exactly in my blind spot on the street where if I am the least bit careless, I’m going to smack his P.O.S. Hyundai one of these days.
And the very cute little mid 20-ish wife next door wears loose baggy clothing around the yard making it difficult for me to assess her properly.
My neighbors are ok, but there is this one thing. I’m on the second story and my balcony is right above their patio. I have a bunch of plants and water them frequently since it’s always hot.
One day I got a call from the management office saying that the neighbors had complained. Apparently, drippings from my plants had fallen down on them while they were having their morning tea out on the patio. I felt so bad that I apologized to both management and to my neighbors and promised myself that I wouldn’t let it happen again.
A week ago, I gave my plants some water (making sure to look down below to see if anyone was down there) right before I left for work. There was a little spillage but I thought it would be alright since no one was down there. But noooo. The wife stopped me on my way to my car. She pointed to the little drops of water that had accumulated on her patio (actually most of the splash was in the common area, not on her “property”).
Puzzled, I apologized and asked if the water had gotten into her apartment (the sliding door was open). No, she said. But someone could have been standing there and gotten wet.
Um, if someone had been standing there I wouldn’t have done it. And it’s an outside patio, for pete’s sake. It rains–what?–almost every day? She must lay an egg every time that happens.
I would have felt bad if it had been a ton of water, but it was just a half of cup at the most. And it was no where near their stuff.
The nitpickiness of her complaint put me in a sour mood for the rest of the day.
It also annoys me that they have no furniture and advertise this fact by leaving their blinds wide open all the time. But I admit that’s my problem.
I used to have a downstairs neighbor who complained every time I turned a fan on in my apartment. She claimed that she could hear the vibrations through the floor and that it was making her crazy. It was a stand fan, so I folded up an old towel and put it between the floor and the base of the fan. She continued to complain every time I turned it on. She insisted that it was keeping her up at night and that it forced her to have to sleep on the couch in the living room. I added another towel, thus lifting the thing six inches off the floor. Finally, she went and bitched to the landlord about it. Fortunately, she sounded so crazy and unreasonable that he didn’t take her seriously.
She moved out and a nice couple moved in below me. We got to be friends, so finally I asked if they could hear vibrations from my fan. They didn’t know what I was talking about.
One day when I was cat-sitting for them, I turned on my fan, went down into their apartment, sat on their bed, and listened. With everything else turned off in both apartments, if you listened very, very hard, you could almost kinda hear a slight hum. And that was without the towel.
I have pretty good neighbors. However, the guy who lived next door is out of the country for a year and has just rented his house out to some students in the meantime. He said there are three of them, but I there seems to be more. There are always about 5 or 6 cars parked in their driveway, hanging out into the street, in front of my yard, and in front of my mailbox. And except for a jeep, they never seem to be the same cars twice. I’ve gotten a note from the Post Office saying they’re not going to deliver mail to me anymore if there’s a car blocking the mailbox, but it’s not my car. I tell the neighbors and they say they’ll move it, only to replace it with a different car the next day. What can I do besides accept the fact I’ll only get mail 2 or 3 times a week?
Ugh! Not my neighbor, but my aunt’s neighbor. Each condo gets one parking space and one visitor’s space. She has her Jeep and her Cruiser in both of hers, so I park in the visitor’s space next to her. No big deal, her neighbor only has 1 car and she parks it right in front of her house.
But oh no.
Neighbor lady likes to have an empty space in front of her garden which is irrelevant because it is completely inaccessible from her car without walking all the way around. So she notices me parking there and starts to slowly iiiinch her car over across the line so I can’t fit my truck there. I know it’s on purpose because this lady backs up her huge whale of a Cadillac perfectly between the lines every other time. If I don’t come around for a while, perfectly between the lines. She could teach a driving course on backing into a parking space. I start visiting more often? Tires conspicuously six inches across the line. Petty bitch.
I live in an apartment building in a row of about 10 of them (the rest of the neighborhood to the north is all private homes, to the south is a major roadway, but a privacy fence protects us from most of the noise)… Actually it’s a pretty nice one and the neighborhood is pretty nice and quiet, not super snooty, but mid to upper middle class.
The little “courtyard” is a strip of grass bordered on both sides by the sidewaks for each of the buildings. The grassy area is where people walk their dogs, but we have far more than our fair share of jerks who simply REFUSE to clean up after their dogs. (none of the tenants of the other 8 buildings act this way).
Then there are the morons who empty their car’s garbage into the miniscule tin garbage can put at the front end of the grass strip for people to dump their dog doo. RiiiiIIIHHT people, like a three gallon trash can is there for the car-trash of 24 tenants.
Last, but definitely not least are the oddball inhabitants of the efficiency apartment directly across from mine and on the third floor just like mine. From what I can tell, as many as four different men, and possibly a couple of females,share this apartment. From the looks of the lot of them, I suspect some sort of halfway house for NOT so recovering drunks or druggies. They seem to run some sort of Odd Jobs for Hire type business out of it, as well as live there.
That’s not the annoying part. The annoying part is that they consider the landing below their stairs to be party central when they’re not working. They stand there and drink and smoke and in apparently drunken stupors make sleazy comments about women walking by. They are clever enough to not directly address anyone though.
Even worse, they leave their apartment door open, AND their bathroom door open, so that if you happen to be walking by at the wrong time, you are treated to the sounds of ALL of their personal business. Burps, peeing, pooping, barfing after too much fun…
