Neighbors can be either your best friend or worst nightmare. In this case, these people decided they were not going to put up with their petty neighbors’ antics any longer. They decided to introduce “petty” to “petty-er” and get sweet revenge on them. People share times when their neighbors were so out of line, that they needed to seek revenge. Content has been edited for clarity.
Anything But Turn The Light Off
“Last year, there was a tenant in the house next door to me that left their attic light on constantly. Their house, their rules, right? Well, there wouldn’t be a problem if there was a shade or something on the window. But they had a mega-watt bulb in there, and it was shining directly into my window.
The first time I mentioned it to them, the guy said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
So I pretty much followed him up the sidewalk, and when he got to where he could see that side of my house, I told him to turn around and look up. There was a ‘spotlight’ on my house. I swear, I was able to take a shower at midnight without turning the bathroom light on.
His response was, ‘Oh,’ and he walked into his house.
They turned the light off 10 minutes later.
Two days later, the light was back on. Three weeks after that, I left for vacation and when I came back, the light was STILL on!!! So, just this one time, it was on for 8 weeks non-stop! I pointed it out again. Nothing. The light stayed on.
I tried one more time after that. I even suggested if they didn’t want to turn the dang thing off, at least get a blind to cover the window. They didn’t do a thing. I even wrote to his landlord. Nothing. So I took action.
I have a very bright flashlight. I turned it on and positioned it in my window so that it was shining directly into their kitchen (that window had blinds, but they didn’t close them all the way).
My thought was to see how long it would take them to figure out how annoying having a light shining on them was, get the hint, and turn the attic light off.
Well, an hour after I turned that light on, there was a knock at my door. It was the police. These people called the police about a freaking light.
The conversation went something like this:
Me: ‘Yes, officers, what’s up?’
Cop 1: ‘Do you know why we’re here?’
Me: ‘I don’t know. Could it be because I’m trying to be a good neighbor by helping the people next door light their kitchen?’
Cop 2 (to cop 1): ‘You were right!’
When they were walking toward my house, they noticed the huge spotlight on my house and figured that had something to do with it.
I told them that I couldn’t believe they had to come out for something so ridiculous and explained the entire situation. I told them how I had that light shining on me for two years and finally had enough.
About 15 minutes later, the neighbor put a giant piece of cardboard over the window. I couldn’t believe that they would rather live with cardboard covering the window rather than simply turning the light off.
The cops came back to me and asked if that was okay. I said that was all that was needed. The neighbors claimed they didn’t know that the light was shining into my house. I called bologna and told the cops that I had mentioned it to them several times.
So the pettiest thing I ever did to get even with a neighbor was to assault them with light.”
Snow Replacement
“Ah, the Snow War.
We had a neighbor who lived across the street from us who was a nasty woman. After hearing the things she’d yell at her terminally-ill husband, her adult son, or any of her other relatives who had somehow been induced to stop by, it was pretty obvious to me that it wasn’t just her neighbors that she hated.
She had a three-car-wide garage with a correspondingly wide driveway, even though she only had one vehicle (this was after her husband had died). When it snowed, she expected whichever of her male relatives were currently at her beck and call to clear the entire width of the driveway. If it was just an inch or two of snow, a snow shovel would suffice. But once in a great while, we’d get deep snow. At that point, random-male-relative would arrive with a snowblower.
In addition to the snowblower, he also brought a genetic lack of respect for other people because the direction in which he chose to blow the snow was not, as would seem logical, onto the mean neighbor’s lawn instead into the street. Specifically, toward the end of our single-car driveway (which was a bit further down the street from her driveway), where it turned into a wide patch of ice.
Because the street had a bit of a slope upward in the direction you’d need to drive to get off our street in the winter, that patch of ice made it nearly impossible for a car to get any traction after exiting our driveway. It wasn’t just a nuisance; it was a dangerous nuisance.
Despite my husband having had words with her and with random-male-relative about the situation, it kept happening. Finally, since I was pretty sure that this behavior wasn’t legal, the next time that the snowblower was used to cause this hazard, I called the police.
Sadly, according to the cop, moving snow onto the street turned out to be a perfectly legal thing to do. That news (which she overheard) seemed to please my mean neighbor quite a lot. Unfortunately for her, that fact was very useful to me.
When her random-male-relative was done with his dirty work and gone, and the sun had gone down, I went outside with a nice, quiet snow shovel (we didn’t own a snowblower ourselves). I removed the snow from the road in front of our driveway. I removed it from most of the streets between our houses. But I was very careful about where I put it.
I put it, very legally, on the street in front of her driveway. From one side of her very wide driveway to the other, I built a ridge of snow about a foot high and a foot thick. I didn’t set foot on her property at all. The snow was was all on the street, where the cop had very plainly said it was permissible to put it.
But once the twice-moved snow froze into a solid mass, there was no way she was going to get a vehicle out of her driveway. It took her quite some time the next day to get someone out to do the very difficult (no snow blowing possible) work of removing that ridge. The only bad part was that it was a Saturday (it would have been much nicer if she’d been late for work).
Interestingly, my mean neighbor never permitted her random-male relatives to blow snow into the street after that.”
Petty Meet Petty
“About 20 years after I asked my neighbors to keep their kids out of my yard and their toys, bikes, and skateboards out of my driveway and off my front porch at least a dozen or more times a week, I came home one day and there they were again busy playing away with my entire yard, porch and drive impassable again like usual.
I was so angry, because like usual when I asked them to move their toys, they told me to park elsewhere. Instead of getting out and cleaning it all up so I could pull into my phucking driveway and then clearing all their stuff off my front porch so I could go into my house like I normally did, I did as I promised the last time and reminded them again this time, and drove over it all.
I swear I crunched that bike under my tires. I recall hoping it did not dent or scratch my car, especially when it was stuck under and dragged a bit as I ran over a skateboard breaking it in half, and other things ultimately ending up parked on a doll’s smashed head. When the girl started screaming hysterically about that, I ripped the body off and handed it to her, and told her if she liked her baby, she should take better care of it.
Of course, the kids were screaming at me about destroying their toys, as I picked up other toys and shoved them in my garbage bin. Then their mother came out and wanted to know what the heck I did.
She wanted me to stop throwing her kids’ toys in my garbage.
I told her that what her five kids don’t pick up before I do will end up in the garbage bin, and if they touch it, I will call the police for burglary as garbage is private property. What was left on my property was mine to do with as I would.
The kids raced me to pick up their toys.
After it was all cleared away, I took my garbage bin into the garage, and I didn’t set it out until six on the morning of the trash haul. Normally, I set it out the night before, but not that time. If they wanted their toys, they could dig through the garbage before they went to school. To make it special for them, I put the dog poo in the bin with the toys right on top.
They weren’t happy about that and paintballed and egged my home. I sat right out there in front of them instead of running off like they did when I came out and returned the same to theirs.
After that, we lived happily ever after and never said another word to each other ever again.”
No Bagpipes In Sight
“Two things back when I was more bitter and vindictive than I am now.
One: I was 13 years old. My family was in Army quarters at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. We were up the hill in a six-plex. One of our neighbors was the French wife of a finance officer. They were nice enough, except that Madame had a poodle, creatively named Fifi, who she let out the door to do her business without supervision. Fifi would come into our yard, take a big steaming poo, and then go home. We mentioned this several times, but our neighbor would just make a big Gallic shrug as if there was nothing she could do about it.
I was the oldest kid in my family, so cleaning poo up was generally my job. Brilliant parenting by my parents, not much that I can’t do now no matter how gross.
So the next time Fifi went poo-poo in our yard, I was ready. I got a trowel, scooped up the turds, and placed them on the doorstep of Fifi’s home. I was outside about an hour later when the neighbor lady came out of her door and slipped in Fifi’s finest. She got poop all over her shoes. And surprise! She was going somewhere, because she was wearing a beautiful outfit, including a very fine pair of shoes.
She made a disgusted sound, then she saw me and said, ‘Oh! Did you see that?’
My shrug would have put Marcel Marceau to shame.
Two: I had neighbors who liked to throw a party now and then. No problem, I used to do that myself. It’s easy. Don’t do it too often, turn the noise down around ten, and don’t do it when people have work or school in the morning. So I’m not hard to get along with. I often would let my neighbors know ahead of time when I was having a party (I think I only had two in 15 years that involved music or revelry) and that they were welcome to come by if they liked. I’d give them my number if they needed us to quiet down.
That worked pretty well. Once in a long time, there would be music, dancing, and chatter in my yard, once in a while, one of the neighbors would do the same. Quieter after 10:00 PM.
But one time, some new neighbors had a loud, drink-fueled party. The music went on until after midnight. People talked loudly. Do you know how there is always that one woman who shrieks at everything when she’s out of it? This party had three. At two in the morning, the music came on really loud again for one song, and people were loud and shouting and laughing. Then it was just loud talk.
Do you know what’s the worst thing to hear when you’ve been up late partying and were trying to sleep off a bad night? Your ill-rested neighbor mowed the lawn, then cleaned the pool while his best friend tried to play the accordion despite several of the chord buttons being stuck.
They were just lucky I didn’t know anybody who played the bagpipes.”
Child-ly Revenge
“For a couple of years, I lived in Toronto, Canada. I was four when we left, and this event happened the day we were moving. For the two years we lived there, the older kids next door liked to terrorize my younger brother and me. I no longer remember what they did to us, but when we reacted, they would jump into the family car that was always sitting in the driveway and lock the door. Their mother never did anything about it or even once came outside to see what was happening.
However, one thing the Mom of the bullies did care about, big time, was her flower garden. It was in the front of their house, full of beautiful, healthy flowers because she spent hours tending it.
To stay out of the way of the moving activities, my brother and I were outside, the neighbor bullies did whatever they always did to us, and our parents were busy with moving activities. No one knew/cared what was happening to us. We were on our own. We reacted as much as a three and four-year-old could. Once again, they jumped into their car and locked the door.
So four-year-old me ignored them, walked past them to the sacred, well-tended flower garden, and started yanking up beautiful, healthy flowers by the handful using both of my angry little fists. It was amazing how many flowers could be pulled up in just a little bit of time. Then I ran home and pressed myself against the wall by the open front door because I was pretty sure I knew what was coming.
I didn’t have to wait very long. Sure enough, in the blink of an eye, the bullies’ Mom came dashing over to our house, stormed in the front door, stopped for a brief moment to glare down at me with a look that could kill, and stalked on into the house to confront my parents. I don’t remember what she said, but I remember watching her gesturing wildly, back-lit by the sun streaming through the windows, while my parents just stood there, surrounded by moving boxes. Knowing my father, I am pretty sure he slid his tongue over to the side of his mouth and was biting on it to keep from laughing. I don’t remember much after that except that I didn’t get in trouble with my understanding parents.
When I think back on the incident, I find it interesting that, even as a four-year-old, I knew exactly which button to push.
And I still treasure the memory of how powerful I felt as I yanked up those flowers.”
Late Night Movie Watching
“I rented the ground-level apartment in my friend’s split level for a few years. The guys who rented upstairs owned a party lighting company. As a result, they usually came home from work around three in the morning. I worked a nine-to-five job, and I’m a fairly light sleeper. When they came home from work, they’d occasionally turn on the TV and usually fairly loud, which would, of course, wake me up. But most of the time, I could drown out the noise by turning on a fan in my bedroom.
This was annoying, but I could deal with it until one of their girlfriends moved in upstairs. This nasty such-and-such had no problem with turning up the volume on the TV in the middle of the night every night and watching for hours. These were the early years of flat-screen TVs and they had a big one, so likely it was very expensive.
When I knocked on the door to ask them to turn it down, they told me, ‘This is when we get home from work, and we’ll do what we want.’
Even having my friend, their landlord, intervene, had no effect.
Well, a few nights of one or two hours of sleep made me downright ingenious. I remembered that once while microwaving my dinner, I had started vacuuming the floor, and having both appliances turned on tripped the circuit breaker. I crossed my fingers that we were on the same circuit.
During the next morning’s three a.m. showing of Willy Wonka, with the girlfriend screaming, ‘I love this movie,’ and turning the volume up even louder than usual, I turned on the microwave and the vacuum. Five seconds and poof. Blessed silence! I heard a little shuffling around upstairs. Then one of them went down into the basement and reset the circuit breaker.
The power came back on, and so did the television. I waited about a minute before turning back on the microwave and vacuuming. Poof. Silence. They reset the circuit breaker again, but this time, there was no more TV. I went back to the most blissful slumber ever.
My friend later told me they complained to him about the power going out because it was such an expensive TV, and that could damage the electronics. I told him if they kept the volume to a respectable level, then I wouldn’t have to say anything. But I wouldn’t hesitate if it happened again. The microwave/vacuum trick was only necessary a couple more times before they got the hint and kept the noise down in the middle of the night.”
Those Are Not Hedges
“Several years back, neighbors, let us say young teens, would cut across the rear yard of my neighbor. When these ‘kids’ did this they would pass through some of my border hedges and then enter my yard in the rear of my garage. Their trespassing was petty, so at first, I just ignored it. After a while of using this ‘shortcut’, these kids began to ruin my hedges, right on the side of my garage and even use it to relieve themselves.
What I did to get these kids without actually hurting them, well slightly let’s say, is still a joke when I tell people what I did. I wish my family went on a vacation to the countryside at a known resort. When we were there they told us to avoid a patch of green which I found out was Poison Ivy.
After about 10 days there, we started to pack for home. What I packed were several Poison Ivy plants I dug up. When I returned home, I planted these Poison Ivy plants at the location where my trespassing teens entered my yard. At first, there seemed to be no reaction to my gardening in the rear of my garage. Forgotten over the winter, these plants grew in the spring, to my surprise. All winter and very early spring, the kids used this route.
Well, when these plants started to grow, with some Miracle Grow, I could not wait until they used the ‘shortcut.’ One day, a group of teens (about five or six) came through my hedges and unknowingly into my crop of Poison Ivy.
What was surprising was the next day, these kids didn’t learn. All Calamine-lotioned up, they continued to use the shortcut until finally, one realized that it was my yard and hedges causing their discomfort. I eventually fenced the area but not until I got some sweet revenge on a group of wise guys and very rude teens.”
False Report
“We had a neighbor in the townhouse next to us. Every time she went to work, her kids would blare music. One would sometimes kick a ball against their wall as well. The music was so loud and full of bass that the tv on the opposite wall vibrated. We complained, complained, and complained some more.
So, my ex-husband decided to play the game as well.
We didn’t have a stereo or radio. We had three computers, one huge subwoofer, and a set of speakers. He placed these on the shared wall in the afternoon. I went out with the kids to the park, and my ex-husband followed but had the music going full tilt.
We did this for a full weekend, and boy was the neighbor mad. They called management and complained.
We showed management our living room. He didn’t know you could play music on a computer. Since we had no stereo, they got in trouble for filing a false report.
This went on for a few more weeks until we complained to the office.
Well, it stopped quickly. The neighbor’s kids were evicted, except for the youngest son. The other kids were not on the lease, and she refused to have their income count as part of her income (which would raise the rent). The noise went down, and we had a quiet angry neighbor.”
Playing The Jams
“I was living in an apartment that was the last apartment on the left, and right outside my apartment was the back porch of the building. Some young kids moved in (late teens/early twenties), and one day they were hanging out on the back porch being extra loud & obnoxious.
I decided to make a mix CD of annoying songs (The Happy Happy Joy Joy song by Ren & Stimpy and The Duck Song, which has over seven versions) that I found on YouTube. Then I decided to use a music program to layer those songs with random, ear-piercing sounds as well as ones that would induce headache, nausea, etcetera.
I popped the CD into my tower stereo, and put my huge box speakers near my living room window that lead to the back porch where my annoying neighbors were hanging out. I played the CD and cranked the volume up halfway.
They stayed for what seemed like another 10 – 15 minutes. They were laughing so hard at my antics and thought I was playing, so I cranked up the volume to 75 percent (the window pane shook), and then they left immediately.
The next day, my landlord came at me with a noise complaint. Those kids had the nerve to tell the landlord on me when they were being loud first.
He said, ‘What’s going on? I never get any noise complaints from you.’
I explained what happened, and he said, ‘Oh okay, they get a strike then.’
My landlord had a three-strike system for problematic tenants. Three strikes and they’re out of there.”
The More The Merrier
“We were camping. There was a quiet time posted from 10 p.m to eight a.m. The kids were little at the time; the youngest was maybe eight months old.
A campsite adjacent to ours was full of young adults who decided to have a party. I guess they weren’t aware of the sign. Ten o’clock came and went, and they were still partying. Music blasting, lots of drinking, and happy chatter filled the air. Lots of fun, except everyone around them, was trying to sleep in a definitely-not-soundproof tent.
We weren’t able to sleep. The baby started crying, so I got up and picked the baby up. He was still crying. I got out of the tent carrying the crying baby. I walked over to the party with the crying baby and sat by their fire. If they were going to keep us awake, we were joining the party. They quickly realized there was a crying baby at their party. They asked me why I brought a crying baby to their party.
I told them they were keeping us awake, and that was the reason why the baby was crying. If I had to be awake because of their party, I got to join in the fun, right?
I pointed to our tent a few feet away and mentioned the quiet time after ten p.m. so people could sleep peacefully in their tents. Then I asked if they had read the sign with the campground rules, and they said they hadn’t. I told them they were lucky the camp host hadn’t kicked them out yet.
Awareness dawned on their faces. They turned off the music and quietly began putting everything away.
We went back to our tent and got some sleep.”
