What to do when dealing with a terrible neighbor. The kind of neighbor with no respect for his or her surrounds. A selfish neighbor that doesn't care about anyone but themselves. The law can't always help, nor can landlords. Sometimes what needs to be done is something extreme. Something that gets the point across that their nonsense won't be tolerated. These stories are just that. People that had just had enough already! Content is edited for clarity.
Watch Your Butts
“In college, I lived in a two-story apartment apartment building. The girl above us was a smoker and had no ashtray. Instead, she just let her butts fall between the cracks in the wooden deck above us, down to our level, usually right on our doormat. I started picking them up and putting them on her doormat. She had the nerve to gripe about me doing that! I told her I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t find them on my doormat. She stopped, but then she started again later. My roommate dated her roommate and I learned this girl had ‘cold sores.’
So the smoker started receiving a ton of Valtrex brochures and other free literature about curing ‘cold sores.'”
The Mean Mother Deserved It
“So this is pretty messed up but here it goes:
I once lived in a apartment with my best friend. It not a nice place, but the price was right. Our neighbor on one side was a middle-aged lady with two sons. Let’s say 13 and 16-years-old. These boys were all gothed out and kind of weird, but they seemed to be good kids. They were always outside sitting on our shared steps. After we had been there for awhile we figured out why.
Their mother was absolutely terrible to these boys. Through our thin walls we could hear the daily verbal abuse, constant yelling and name calling. As a result, we hated this lady. She was a terrible person. We would occasionally let the boys come in and play video games or hang out for a few minutes if it was raining or cold, so they didn’t have to go home.
One night my friend and I get wasted and somehow find a freshly dead groundhog. This evil lady’s car happened to be unlocked, so we gutted this dead groundhog and shoved it under her drivers seat. It was like the middle of summer. You can imagine the stench that must have come from that car. The car did not move for 3 or 4 days. Then one day it is gone and we never saw it again.
We didn’t put much thought into our stupid plan and, unfortunately, a few days later we heard the lady blaming one of the kids for the car. She didn’t say a lot about it and, of course, the kids didn’t know a thing about it.
This was years ago and I’m not proud of what we did, but that’s not to say that evil hag didn’t deserve it!”
The Tin Man
“When I was living in dorms at college, this horrible guy in a neighboring suite kept drinking this other guy’s milk.
When the horrible guy went home one weekend, the other guy got into his room and covered everything with tin foil. He individually wrapped DVDs on a shelf, plus the bed, the walls. He literally used hundreds of yards of tinfoil. He placed plastic cups on the entire floor, all filled with water, and spelled out ‘not your milk’ with food coloring in some of the cups.
Apparently the milk didn’t disappear after that weekend.”
One Good Spin Deserves Another
“I used to live in an apartment building that has a shared laundry in the basement. There are 10 washers and 10 dryers. I had a single load of laundry to do before a flight the next morning. So I headed downstairs with my basket. Two machines are running when I get down there. There’s also a single couple taking up EIGHT washers to sort their laundry.
I asked politely if they could divide one of them up into 1/7ths and put it in with their others so I can use a machine. They declined because apparently they had ‘a system,’ and tell me to wait however long it takes for the next person to claim their stuff to get the next machine.
At this point, I realize it’s time to get petty.
I wait until they leave and then go hit the pause button on all of their machines. I need to stall. Then I wait for the next washer to free up. I transfer this innocent bystanders ratty old towels immediately, pay for their dryer, and leave a note to which dryer it’s in. Then I start my washer, and I hit ‘run’ on my machine. I wait a few more minutes, and then resume all of the couple’s washers.
They come back down in the 40 minutes it takes to run and are mildly confused by why their machines are taking longer than usual. They suspect no foul play though. At this point, my washer is finishing up, so I grab a laundry cart and empty it out. I then take my laundry and divide it into 8 different dryers (like two shirts and a couple socks per dryer) and set them all running, one by one, as they watch in bitter disbelief.
And then I settle down in a chair to watch my $12.50 of petty revenge spin.”
This Is What Happens When You Get Your Neighbor Arrested
“This happened a few years ago, when I was in college. I went to one of the largest schools in my state, so naturally there was a lot of partying.
One year I was living off campus in a smaller apartment and we were playing video games in our living room with some music on. Our neighbors downstairs decided that they thought our music was too loud (it probably was), but instead of coming up and asking us to turn it down, they called the cops for a noise complaint. When the cops arrived, we opened the door without checking the peephole and just opened the door. We were pretty much arrested immediately for some weed in plain sight on our living room coffee table.
After we get our list of charges, we see, on the sheet, the name of who made the call for the noise complaint, and after some sleuthing on Facebook we found this guy who was DATING the girl who lived under us, and didn’t even live in our 3 story complex! Come to find out he drives the only very large, very loud, pickup truck that parks in our lot, and can be heard for miles around. So, you can imagine over the next 10 months, we lived in that apartment he found everything you can think of in the bed of that truck. Ranging from dead animals, rotten meat, and the grand finale being an entire parking block from the other side of the lot. Also during the last week we lived in the complex we decided his truck didn’t need the hitch on the back of it anymore, so we threw it out for him.
He should’ve had the balls to come and ask us to turn down our music in person and save all of us a misdemeanor charge we had to pay for.”
But Is It Really Worth It?
“In my apartment building we have a wide variety of people living. We have retired folk, grandparents living out their golden years, transplants from out of state, people of different races, cultures, and backgrounds; it’s actually pretty great.
BUT, we also have a ‘resident neckbeard’ in his late 20s. He’s a deadbeat that mooches off his brother.
He has an expensive 2012 sports car, paid for by his parents, that he doesn’t take care of. The tail light lenses are cracking, the paint is fading and getting weird streaks from years of rain runoff without being washed, the rotors are perma-rusted, and worse.
For some reason, he absolutely HAS to have the first parking spot. He doesn’t care who else isn’t home yet – old people, people with a ton of groceries, whoever – that first spot is ‘his, ‘even though we do not have assigned parking. He will park in it and leave his vehicle sitting for weeks, sometimes months at a time, just to keep others from having it. If by some chance, someone else manages to take it, he will wait and move his car to it IMMEDIATELY after it becomes open. I know this because I watched him do this one morning, as I left for a grocery store run (having parking in the space the evening prior). While I was sitting at the red light in front of the apartment building, I saw him run out to his car and reclaim ‘his’ spot.
Now, I’m normally a fairly chill guy. A live and let live-type. It’s not that I particularly care about what spot I park in, but rather the fact that someone will go out of their way to claim it, even if they are literally parked right next to it.
That evening, as I was wiling away my hours on the internet, I kept my blinds cracked open to observe if the RN (resident neckbeard) would move his car again – whether it be to procure food, visit the game store across the street, or anything else deadbeat neckbeards venture out of their house for. He did and once he was gone, I moved my car to the open space, leaving the only available spot to be the one I vacated, at the other end of the lot.
But, my friends, the story does not end there. When the work week started, and I left to be a productive member of society, I once again witnessed the spectacle of the neckbeard moving his vehicle back to the spot.
Alright, it’s on now!
I end up biding my time, waiting for the spot to open again. As soon as it does, I make it a point to get to my car so this person can watch me take his spot, hoping that the message I’m trying to send of ‘I’m calling you out on your bull, you now stop it’ comes across clearly. It does not.
Weeks of this back-and-forth turns into months, during the time I’m trying to make a further point of this person’s shenanigans by not moving my vehicle when it becomes available after a 3rd party claims it. His brother parks there and then leaves again? Cool. Other neighbors park there and move? No big deal. Neckbeard moves there and leaves? I’m on it (and vice-versa).
It has now been three years since this started. I’ve tried leaving friendly notes, (since I do not know which apt is his) politely asking if he’s not going to be driving his vehicle regularly to move it to a lesser-used parking spot so that those of us who work regular jobs, guests, and our elderly neighbors can make use of it. Nothing.
To this day, if he drives off somewhere, I will take it with all due haste.
I can’t very well relent now, it’s gone on too far. The only option is for him to admit defeat.”
Enough Is Enough
“Once upon a time, I was a newly married lad. We purchased my grandparent’s house from their estate, as our first home. We didn’t have kids yet, so we both had full-time jobs and hectic schedules.
First Incident: One day, I came home from work to find my dog out on her run, going nuts. She rarely barked, so I paused for a second, trying to find out was going on… and watched as a bright yellow sprinkler came flying over the fence. There was a bunch of stuff lying about my back yard, where the neighbor kid (let’s call him Evil Son) had been throwing it at my poor dog.
I walked next door, and banged on the neighbor’s door. The boy’s mother (let’s call her ‘The Hag’) came to the upstairs window (not even to the door) and yelled ‘What are you doing on my property?’ at me. By the way, this is my very first interaction with this woman. I introduced myself, and tried to explain what was going on. She immediately jumped to ‘Do you have video of my son throwing stuff?’
Then, inexplicably, The Hag started blaming my wife and I. ‘If we weren’t such hermits, everyone wouldn’t hate us so much.’ Odd, all of my other neighbors waved when we went by, though we didn’t interact more than that. She was the only one I didn’t know. Anyhow, she went on, and it turned out that she was upset that I didn’t tell her that my grandmother had passed. Uh, yeah, I hadn’t told someone I didn’t know about a family matter. Fine, whatever and I dropped the matter, and left.
Second Incident: Shortly thereafter, I stopped working a regular 9-5, and started my own business, working out of my home. I noticed some mail went missing. One day, I see the mail truck go by, and put on shoes to go pick it up from the mailbox. When I get down there, I find the box empty, and The Hag walking away from it with my mail in hand.
I yell at her, and she drops it in a pile on her driveway. Proceeds to yell at me that it was blowing around her driveway, and that I should be more careful.
Yeah, so I call the cops. They are reticent to do anything, since I didn’t actually see her take the mail from my mailbox, but they still go over to talk to her. I can hear her yelling at them from inside my house. The next day, she runs out and stands in front of my car, trying to confront me as I am leaving. I tell her in no uncertain terms that I am ok with running her over.
Third Incident: A neighbor’s pet bunny went missing from its outdoor hutch. Another neighbor spots Evil Son down at the end of our cul-de-sac, looking suspicious. Bunny is found, strangled and mutilated, where Evil Son was seen. Cops are called, denials, the works.
Fourth Incident: We were getting our house ready to sell. Part of that included stripping and repainting our attached deck. I come home from work, and fine a can of paint has been opened, and thrown across the deck, some furniture, and the side of the house. There are a few child-sized footprints through the paint. Cops come, but don’t care at all.
Fifth Incident: The Hag has an ‘extinction burst,’ as they call it, blaming everyone for everything bad in her life. She puts fliers in everyone’s mailboxes, talking about a conspiracy against her. Did you know that that’s actually illegal, and punishable by fine? She does now…
Sixth Incident: The Hag gets kicked out of a city alderman meeting, where she tried to have the entire neighborhood condemned for various imagined slights.
Results: So, after years of dealing with this woman, we prepared to move to a new house. We threw one last blow-out party, as one does. I get a little inebriated, and went on a rant about how little I was going to miss having that neighbor.
A friend decided that payback was in order, so we went down into the cellar, and perused my grandfather’s shelves of Stuff He Never Threw Away. Amongst it all was a bottle of weed killer. Great Depression era, block letters, ‘weed killer’. I have no idea what was in that stuff.
Now, this is where the story gets a little hazy. My friend disappeared for about an hour, and then was back, as if nothing ever happened. I never saw the bottle leave the shelf. But, a few days later, parts of The Hag’s lawn started to turn brown and die. Big block letters spelled out ‘I AM A HAG.’
I ran into The Hag a week later, as I was getting my mail. Contractors were tearing up her lawn, laying down rolls of sod. She stomped over to me, and complained about my other neighbor’s kids. She clearly saw them apply lighter fluid to her lawn, and light it on fire to burn the awful message into it.
Funny thing, whatever was done to her lawn, within a week sections of the new sod died, and the message reappeared (although blobby and illegible).
And I still have that yellow sprinkler. I don’t feel sorry for her. I’m pretty confident that her son’s behavior was a direct result of her lack of taking responsibility for her own actions. Further, this wasn’t some naive young woman. She was older, and should have known better.”
The Music Man
“I used to make music more or less as a part-time job. I moved into a new apartment that had downstairs neighbors. I did absolutely everything I could to be a good neighbor, but every time I would sit down to make music, after about 10 minutes, no matter what time of the day, I would get a banging on the floor/ceiling. This was annoying, but I tried to respect their living space, and tried to keep the noise down.
Until football season started.
Every day that a football game was on, they would scream and shout at the TV. This was my breaking point. I had enough. I went downstairs and tried to talk with the neighbors to ask them why it was fair for them to more or less shut down my work days, but think it’s ok to scream at the TV when a football game is on.
Well, needless to say, the neighbors were obnoxious redneck idiots and tried to fight me, instead of talking, so that was it. I looked up the sound regulations in the neighborhood, and made sure I was in the clear.
Being a musician, naturally, I had some great speakers that could push some serious volume. For the next three months, every single day, when I would leave for work, I would put on annoying 10-hour YouTube videos at FULL volume.
They did everything they could to complain, but since I was keeping within the sound regulations, I was in the clear.
They tried to fight with me again after this, but they ended up getting arrested, and moved out shortly afterwards.
All you had to do was let me get my work done!”
Infesting The Enemy
“Not exactly my neighbor, but my landlord, who also lived in the neighborhood.
A couple decades ago, I was renting a house in the Seattle area and my landlord was an awful property management company (the owner lived nearby). I had a lot of arguments with them/him, and when I moved out, I cleaned the whole house, and nothing had been damaged. Regardless, they decided to keep my $850 deposit, plus they had the gall to say I owed them an additional $10 for ‘cleaning costs!’
Right about that time, I was a victim of a violent crime, and I had to move for reasons related to that. I didn’t have the time or energy to argue with them about the $860 dollars, as I’d been hospitalized. Feeling beleaguered, I took the first apartment I could afford. It had cockroaches. I hadn’t noticed them when I was looking at the place, but after I moved in I saw them. I felt devastated, so many bad things piling up on me. That’s when I got an idea…
I started to catch the cockroaches in a jar and save them. After about a week I had a good number of live cockroaches in my jar, so I drove down to the property management office to pay the $10. In the lobby the secretary asked what I needed and I replied that ‘I thought I owed them some money, but wasn’t sure how much.’ The secretary got up and left the lobby to find my file, leaving me totally alone. At that point I opened my backpack and took out the jar of roaches, opened it and let them scurry away. Within seconds, they had disappeared under floorboards and furniture. A moment later, the secretary came out and said, ‘Oh yes, you owe us $10.’
I paid them and left with a big smile on my face. Petty revenge? Yes. Do I feel guilty? NO.”
Ritual Chants And Bedtime Scares
“This is something that started out as a petty revenge, but ended up consuming a lot of my free time during my freshman year of high school.
So I had a next-door neighbor, who I’ll call ‘Chris.’ Chris wasn’t the worst kid I knew, but if this were Myspace he wouldn’t be on my top 8. Now for the most part Chris and I got along well and we would always talk on the way home from school about video games and music and stuff that freshman talk about.
Well, one day, on the way home from school, Chris asked me if I wanted to go to church with him and his family that weekend, to which I replied something along the lines of ‘no thanks man I don’t really believe in God.’ This must have struck a chord with Chris because after that day Chris never spoke to me or even acknowledged me. That was until Chris overheard a conversation I was having at school about smoking weed. Chris, like the self-righteous young tool he was, took it upon himself to tell his very religious parents my plans, who then took it upon themselves to tell my parents.
This left me grounded for two weeks. During my time in the hole, aka my bedroom, I devised a plan to put the fear of God in Chris. My bedroom window faced Chris’s bedroom and I thought about just throwing rocks at it throughout the night, but decided that wasn’t enough, because snitches get stitches. So I ended up taking fishing line and tying it to my wireless Bluetooth speaker. I made sure there was enough line to reach from my window to the bushes under Chris’ window. I then downloaded a bunch of satanic chants and satanic ritual stuff like the chant to summon the devil onto my iPod. Every night when Chris went to bed at 9pm I would slowly open my window and lob my bluetooth speaker over to the bushes under Chris’ window and start playing satanic chants.
This went on every night for the two weeks I was grounded, but it didn’t stop there. I saw the toll it was taking on Chris, he would look dead tired at school, and I knew he was tired because I sat there most nights watching him turn his lights back on and look out the window, and sometimes he even got his parents to go take a peek, but to no avail. I tasted blood and I was going to push Chris as far as I could.
For three months, I continued this and each day I would watch Chris turn his lights on/off four to five times a night. I would set alarms on my phone throughout the night so I could wake up and mess with him, and one final alarm so I could reel in my satanic grenade before the sun came up. It got so bad there was nights I refused to go out with friends so I could stay home and mess with Chris.
I eventually got bored of messing with Chris, so on the last night, I put the ‘Rick Roll’ song on the speaker long enough for him to hear it, but short enough not to wake anyone up besides Chris.
Apparently this prank took a toll on Chris, because his grades dropped significantly that semester, and the next year his parents put him into a private Catholic school. I never really spoke to him after that despite being neighbors.”
The Pettiest Of Revenges
“My downstairs neighbor at my old apartment was most likely a substance dealer. He didn’t have a job, and cars would come by at all hours of the day or night, often honk loudly, then he or his girlfriend would run out and chat with them for like five minutes and the car would drive off.
The slinging didn’t bother me, but the honking at all hours did. It would wake my girlfriend and I up at all hours of the night. Frequently his clients and friends would be parked taking up two spaces when I came home from work, throwing off our already crowded parking scheme. His own vehicle was parked in such a way that if he had moved a few feet closer to the house we could have another spot, but his car didn’t actually run so he couldn’t move it.
At one point, he started dating a woman with three kids, and when they were over they’d leave their bike and toys in the parking lot or in front of our steps so we’d have to dodge them in the morning. She also had a small dog, and while she was usually good about cleaning up its poo piles, she would still miss them from time to time.
It was all minor annoyances, so I decided to pay him back in the most petty way possible. Each floor paid for their own electricity. I knew our downstairs landing light was on his circuit, since it worked before we set up power to our apartment and didn’t work for the few weeks between the previous tenant moving out and him moving in. It was an old incandescent bulb, not an energy efficient one like we had at the top of the stairs and throughout our apartment.
After his friend took up two parking spaces for like 3 days when his truck died in our parking lot, I never turned that light off. It was probably costing him an extra thirty a month in electricity!
Ok, pretty stupid, but I was really happy about it.”