Alright, I don’t necessarily have the 5 steps to turn your horrible neighbour into your best friend, nor do I even know how to make your jerk of a neighbour go from unbearable to bearable, but I do have a story I wanted to tell you so I can see if any of you might have some advice on what I should do next to get through to my nasty neighbour from downstairs.
My BF and I have lived in our apartment for 9 months now, and our lease will be up in September. I honestly thought we’d live in this suite for at least 2 years, as it’s spacious (at least 900 sq. ft.) and fairly cheap ($1100/month for rent, and heat and hot water are included). But last night, things changed. We live on the second floor, and below us is this little bachelor suite with this guy who lives in it who we’ve still never met. He has a tendency to play really loud techno, or yesterday death metal (I guess he’s branching out a little) at really odd hours. He’s never consistent though, which makes it even more irritating. Sometimes he’ll go a month without playing loud music, and sometimes it will be everyday for a week straight. I can’t express how annoying it is. It seriously sounds like we are at a hip hop concert that we never wanted to go to. The base is so invasive that our kitchen floor vibrates. He also has a tendency to bang really loud on his ceiling, our floor, whenever I do dishes. Now, I can’t stand having a kitchen full of dishes, and we only have one sink and no dishwasher, so yeah, doing the dishes will take me approximately 20 minutes to do. But I’ve tried for the past month or so not to do them after 8pm or clang any dishes around in the sink, thinking that this might solve the problem. It didn’t. After several failed attempts at knocking on his door so we could talk about these issues (he’s always at home and never answers), my BF and I decided it was finally time to write him a note.
The first note was regarding his banging after I did dishes. It was a fairly nice note saying we heard him bang and it’s always around the time we do dishes. If this is an issue we won’t do them after 8pm otherwise it might be a pipe issue on his end that he may want to alert the landlord to. I taped it to his door, and the next day it was gone meaning he got it and probably read it. I was quite pleased with myself. The next day, right at 6pm, I did the dishes again and right after I finished, another 4 bangs on his ceiling came through. Then the loud death metal began. This required another note. Again, I wrote him a really nice note on some really cute paper that had clouds and flowers on it saying that he may not realize it but his music is really loud, and we’ve tried knocking on his door several times to no avail. If he could turn it down that would be much appreciated. Then we got a note.
The first thought I had was “Yes, finally, he’s opening up the lines of communication and we can come to a solution for us all!”. Sadly, no. It was a pretty insulting letter telling us that in fact we are the loud neighbours, constantly banging around our house after 11pm for long periods of time, and then he threw in some really unnecessary insults like “A simple bang on the wall should be a sufficient indication to any half intelligent person (let alone two half intelligent people)” and “You’re not welcome to post any more of your imbecilic notes on my door”. Ouch! My notes were nice and honestly were just stating facts. I could have easily written “Turn down your f***ing techno music, not everyone likes to do coke at 9 in the morning like you” but I didn’t because I thought how would that be helpful? I guess I really do have half a brain if I didn’t realize this guy speaks in insults only, and I’m pretty sure with the terrible grammar he used in his letter, he definitely looked up all his big words via thesaurus.com.
At the end of his note, he told us to never write him another note or knock on his door again, and to please stop disturbing him. My BF and I were beyond shocked. If we were so loud banging around at 11pm to midnight like he claims (which is completely inaccurate, we are in bed or watching TV quietly at those hours) why has he never come to talk to us? I’m sorry but I just don’t understand people who don’t want to communicate in order to solve a problem that’s so obviously an easy fix. The frustrating thing is he was really vague on how we were noisy. My BF and I were racking our brains trying to figure out how we could be loud, but besides me doing dishes, and me working out maybe once a week (I work out in our living room which is above our utility room and laundry room, not his suite), we are just walking around. Maybe us walking barefoot around our fully-carpeted house is really loud to him? Well, we’ll never know because he has essentially told us he doesn’t want to communicate with us! Plus, his reasoning for playing loud music was to drown out all of our loud banging. Umm, again, I’m calling bullshit on that. Most times he starts playing his music is when we are sitting on our computers or sleeping. Maybe this guy hears voices in his head too?
I thought we should maybe get the landlord involved, but my BF said honestly what could he do besides possibly make matters worse. After going for a walk and getting some ice cream to cool off after reading the letter (and basically having our Friday night ruined) we concluded that this guy just isn’t reasonable, he’s probably some grumpy guy who has lived there forever and has always hated the people who live above him. In conclusion, there’s no reasoning with someone who wants to live life full of anger instead of wanting to come to a resolution and dare I say it, actually communicate with us. It just really bugs me because, besides his unnecessary insults which essentially were put in there to hurt our feelings, I cannot understand someone who doesn’t want to address a problem, talk about it, come to a solution, then move forward. Maybe he didn’t watch enough Sesame Street when he was a kid.
As of right now, we’re honestly just going to do what we regularly do. As he wasn’t specific in how were are so noisy, and doesn’t want us to communicate with him in any form, I guess he’ll just have to deal with us being noisy. And when he starts playing techno really loud, I’m just going to have to turn on Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” song a little bit louder over his suite to drown it out. Then again, we are also considering looking for a new place, as this guy’s kind of ruined it for us, though I don’t really like that idea because I feel like he wins if we leave. What’s so strange is we have neighbours above us and next to us and we’ve never heard a peep from them, and they’ve never banged on our walls like assholes either. God, I feel like I’ve just described an episode of Seinfeld.
Have you ever been in a similar situation? How were you able to solve it?
-Mo’ Houses!
(Image: Barry-Williams.com)
