What is WRONG with these people????

In My Humble Opinion
1

This seems too mild for the pit, but if I’m wrong, please feel free to move it dear mods. :slight_smile:

My upstairs neighbors are idiots. Or, at the very least, clumsy dolts with nothing to do. They are: a mom, dad, and toddler in a one bedroom apartment. A very tiny one-bedroom. From what I’ve observed, the mom works and dad is a SAHD. A very very BAD one, as in, the poor kid is cooped up all day in said apartment. And this kid, from the sounds of things, is EXTREMELY energetic, he needs to be taken out to the very lovely yard between the apt buildings and allowed to RUN his little heart out, but based on the sounds of things, every day, they stay there all of the time.

I call them “the Elephant family”. I’ve lived in apartments since I’ve been on my own, and I’ve never heard anyone make so much noise. Based on what my fellow downstairs neighbors have told me, they hear very little from the people over their heads.

These people STOMP. All. The. FREAKING TIME! The toddler sounds like a bowling ball bouncing around the apartment and they let him pound on the floors and walls. It sounds as if a construction crew is up there. Furniture dragging noises occur on a very regular basis, as in, several times a day.

And yes, I complained to the management, and the stomping got worse. It was as if the dad was up there PURPOSELY driving his feet as hard as he could as he was walking around. Some time after my one and only complaint (I didn’t want it to get even worse, or have my tires slashed or something), Mrs. Elephant left Mr. Elephant for a while.

And she apparently took baby elephant with her, so for several weeks, other than Mr. Elephant’s occasional drunken (yes, drunken stomps DO sound very different from normal stomps :D) staggering stomps, it was blissfully quiet. Also, based on the noise, (and/or lack thereof), and presence or absence of the Elephant family car, it appeared that Mr. Elephant was traveling in the early mornings to wherever Mrs. Elephant was staying, and watching the baby for the day while she worked. Then, they started coming home in the afternoon (but thankfully they were napping or something, more on that in a bit), and then baby elephant was back living with Mr. Elephant. I could guess these events in the Elephant family life by the times of day the elephant-stomping, construction noise, and furniture dragging noises were taking place.

Now apparently they’re back together, Mr. and Mrs. Elephant, unfortunately for me. Mr. Elephant is one of those (in his own mind) hipper than thou, wannabe frat boys. Mrs. Elephant seems very nice, she always pets my dog and says hello if I’m out in the front. But Mr. Elephant is a jerk. He yells obscenities loud enough to be heard clearly in my apartment. He does it when only the baby is there, so his “You’re a DEAD MFr!!!” are probably directed at the little one. I’ve heard the Elephant parents have a few loud go-'rounds as well. He isn’t very nice to her either.

My only “revenge” poor as it is, is that (based on the noise/silence evidence), both Mr. Elephant and baby elephant are soundly napping about the time I get home from work. Great! Let the brat sleep at 4pm so that he can be good and gassed up to make noise all evening. I accidentally discovered one night that my bathtub appears to make enough noise that it wakes baby elephant up. I got home one afternoon after work, and the apartment above was complete silence, despite the fact that Mr. Elephant’s car was in his spot. I took the dog out, and came back in to take a bath and about 0.7 seconds after I turned on the bathtub faucet…BAM! stompstompstompstompSqUuueeeee Squuuueeee (oh, I forgot to mention, the brat screams the entire time he’s running), at almost the same time a VERY loud “gDAMNIT!” from dad. An evil thought formed in my brain, so the next afternoon, I waited a bit, just to see if all was still quiet, it remained quiet for a few hours.

The next afternoon same thing, all quiet at that time of day, so I just went in and turned on the bathtub faucet. Shonuff! half a second later, the stomping of little feet, and dad’s very clear “DAMNIT” and his large angry stomping feet. I waited a few days, and tried it again, and was rewarded with baby elephant’s immediate stomping and dad’s foul mouth. At least they don’t sleep until 6pm only to have little monster stomping around until midnight! But I’m not going to be turning on my bathtub every afternoon for Pete sake, besides, babies just get used to that sort of thing, and it’ll lose its power anyway.

Oh how I wish they’d move out! I wish I knew of something, not harmful, but annoying enough that would only bother them, and not my other neighbors, something that would be enough that it would get them to leave.

2

You woke a kid up from his nap on purpose? Deliberately antagonizing someone that you know is already borderline abusive to the kid?

What the hell is wrong with you?

3

I suspect the building has little to no insulation/sound dampening between floors and thus every little sound carries. Wait until they move and you hear the same or worse with the next tenant.

Where I used to live, the kids really did raise a ruckus upstairs, including jumping off the kitchen counters and shaking our cabinets below. One day after a jump, one of our cabinets full of dishes came loose from the wall! Fortunately my husband was right there to catch it.

4

I see your point, but is CanvasShoes just supposed to put up with that kind of noise all the time? It sounds like they’ve complained to the management to no avail (not only to no avail, but the complaint made the problem worse). So what’s the alternative? Moving?

I guess mentioning something to Mrs. Elephant might be worth a try, but given how obnoxious Mr. Elephant seems to be, that doesn’t seem like it would work.

I hate obnoxious bullies who continue to get away with their crap because everybody’s too scared to call them on it–especially when they know it and take advantage of it.

5

Put some speakers, pointed up, against the ceiling and play opera?

6

I so know how you feel. I’ve had upstairs neighbors from hell a few times. Thankfully not right now, although I have plenty of neighbors from hell living other directions from me (including the fucking dangerous evil assholes who KEEP pulling the fire alarm, which causes no one to even go outside anymore and we’ll all be screwed if there is ever a real fire). But upstairs ones are a special kind of torture.

Maybe you should keep complaining. Have management come in your apartment and hear how loud it is. I called the emergency number a few times in the middle of the night when my previous upstairs neighbors were having one of their screaming fights, and I think management was getting sick of being disturbed about it and finally actually did something, despite being incompetent morons.

7

Yes. Welcome to apartment life. It sounds like he’s living in a place with thin insulation, so that the noise of moving around is transmitted loudly into his apartment. It is not reasonable for him to expect a small toddler to be perfectly silent, and it is unreasonable to the point of insanity for him to think that deliberately waking this toddler up from his nap and angering the toddler’s dad is going to help at all, in any way.

This isn’t “calling an obnoxious bully on his crap.” This is passive-aggressive revenge on a little kid who doesn’t know any better and doesn’t deserve it.

I mean, I am honestly having trouble comprehending someone who hears a parent constantly loudly cursing at their child, does something to deliberately make that parent upset and curse at the child MORE, and then comes to a message board to post smugly all about how their plan went so great. What the fuck, seriously.

8

So CanvasShoes is supposed to be silent in his apartment to avoid waking the toddler? What about “welcome to apartment life” for the Elephant family? Especially if they’ve been called on their loudness by management and responded by being even louder, I don’t think Mr. Elephant has any right to bitch when a neighbor does a perfectly legitimate activity (taking a bath) during normal daylight hours. Now, if CS did this in the middle of the night, that might be different. But what if there really was something he wanted to do during baby’s naptime that made noise (like really taking a bath/shower, practicing a musical instrument, listening to music, running the vacuum cleaner, etc.)? Would the fear of pissing off Mr. Elephant be a deterrent?

I really do feel bad for the kid being stuck in the middle of this, but using a toddler as a bargaining chip in something like this is a pretty crappy thing to do IMO. If CS is genuinely concerned about Mr. Elephant being abusive, maybe a call to CPS might be in order.

9

i find this demeaning to the people in question as the bradnick of ‘elephant people’.

10

i mean how dare you use such terminology?

if it bothers you don’t play silly games.

11

Actually, my mental image was “wannabe frat boy” Mr. Elephant is playing video games all day while his bored-as-hell toddler is desperately trying to stay amused in a one bedroom apartment. Which would (again, in my mind) mean the “dead MFR” is probably the guy on the other side of the Call of Duty screen.

12

Yeah, I’m a relatively mild-mannered woman but you will find me occasionally yelling vile obscenities at my video games. Yelling “you’re a dead motherfucker” at a baby makes absolutely zero sense.

13

The OP makes it pretty clear she was turning the shower on only and entirely to wake up the baby, which is making the baby into a punishment tool for the dad.

And for whatever it’s worth, my son’s nap and bedtimes seem entirely unrelated: a later nap doesn’t mean he stays up later. However, an overtired baby sleeps less at night and wakes up earlier than a well rested one.

14

Any chance you could offer to take the toddler on a walk when you’re out with your dog?

15

Right, because that’s clearly what I was suggesting.

Yep.

Also yep.

Look, CS should complain all (she? he?) wants, to management, to the police, to the other neighbors, to whoever she (let’s go with that) thinks will listen. The upstairs dad sounds like a shitty neighbor and not a great dad either. But using a kid’s naptime as a weapon against an annoying neighbor is just crazy. On top of everything else, it is entirely unlikely to produce the “kid sleeps happily all through the night during sleeping times I deem reasonable” that the OP wants.

16

I’m also wondering if a call to CPS might be in order. Screaming obscenities at toddlers is not good. And it sounds like Mrs. Elephant may have a clue that the situation is not good. Perhaps a little push from CPS is needed for Mrs. Elephant to take little Babar and move back with her parents - leaving Mr. Elephant without a way to pay the rent.

It seems like a fairly inevitable outcome with the very little information we have - generally, no one benefits by dragging it out.

Of course, they will be replaced by a family of nocturnal moose…but…

17

Yeah, true (and apologies if I got CanvasShoes’s gender wrong). Though she did say she discovered the bathtub thing while taking a bath one afternoon, which implies that at least some of the time she does do this without any nefarious intentions.

I realize there’s no really good solution here (it’s not fair to expect her to move or to curb her normal daily activities to avoid a bully (and this guy, by the description provided, is a bully), but it’s also not fair to the baby to wake him up just to punish his dad). I just get vicariously annoyed by situations like this, where the obnoxious person has the upper hand, knows it, and uses it to his/her advantage.

I guess continuing to complain to the management (and maybe recording some of the more egregious noise) might be the only reasonable responses if talking to Mrs. Elephant isn’t an option. You’d think if Mr. Obnoxious Elephant (or his wife) cared about the well-being of their kid, they wouldn’t do things that would antagonize the neighbors into passive-aggressive retaliations that affect the baby more than the elder Elephants.

18

Well, all snark aside, CS did say that she discovered the bathtub trick while getting ready to take a bath (a normal, non-retaliatory activity). Unless the apartment has really loud pipes (and I suppose this is possible) then it’s reasonable to assume that other normal apartment-type activities like watching TV, listening to music, vacuuming, etc. might also wake the Elephant baby (I don’t care if they wake Mr. Elephant–he made his bed, he can sleep in it–or not).

True, and I agree that this is not the best way to deal with the situation. It’s really too bad she can’t do something to wake up or otherwise annoy Mr. Elephant without disturbing little Babar.

19

And that’s why I’ve never lived in apartment, have spent as few nights with GFs and SOs in them as possible, and would make a go with living in a forest camp rather than live in one now.

My worst case was my long-time GF, later wife, later ex-wife, who lived in crappy apartments she didn’t want to move out of pending our planned move-in. For months I spent nights there with something like an Elephant Family upstairs, except that it was of the crack whore/meth head subspecies. Bad enough to listen to them stomp and screech and fight, but their kid’s only apparent entertainment was to twong the spring doorstop, for hours at a time, most of the clock. The fwonnnngg! fwonnggg! fwong-fwonnnng! resonated over the entire ceiling, as loud as ordinary conversation.

Tapping on the ceiling brought floods of the filthiest invective I’ve ever heard. One or two tries at engaging them in the common area weren’t much better. Management couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything.

But then I married her and learned what real torture was, so it’s all relative…

20

But…

It’s apparently not the kind of thing that CS will be doing regularly to spite the little child.

Umbrage misdirected.