Neighbors are TR:wtf:


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Polygeekery said in The Official Status Thread:

    We need a "Neighbors are TR:wtf:" topic

    Trufax.

    I live in a semi detached house surrounded by trees so I can't even see any other neighbouring houses. Obviously the neighbourhood crazies are the adjoining house.

    When we moved in they seemed nice enough, although it was obvious that she was the type to hold a grudge if you get on the wrong side of her. They also had 5 dogs but the walls are quite thick and we couldn't really hear them.

    Shortly after we moved in, they got a 6th. It was a bit noisy for the first few weeks but then it settled in. then they got a 7th, which was a rescue dog who they took on because it bit its last owner, who had bought it from Romania. This dog is a right little shit, and constantly sets some subset of the other 6 so if the neighbours are out there's almost constant barking.

    We asked them to try and keep a lid on the noise since this was all happening just after my daughter was born and the barking always seems to start just as she gets to sleep. They pretty much ignored us or told us that dogs bark and we shouldn't complain.

    So we lodged a noise complaint with the council. In theory, these are anonymous, but when there's one other house in sight and you get a letter saying "one of your neighbours has complained about the noise", it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out who it was. They stopped talking to us, but the noise did seem to reduce a bit.

    Then, when we had a friend over and were sitting in the garden, we got a torrent of abuse from the neighbour through her window. Lots of swear words, lots of "walk your fucking dogs, mine aren't any trouble", threats to tell our landlord all sorts of bullshit about what we apparently do.

    Since then, they both seem to be out a lot more, and the dogs are almost non stop. This house would be great if it wasn't for the fucking neighbours



  • @Jaloopa Over here in Germany, dog owner are required to get their dogs to keep quiet for two hours around noon and in the evenings (22h to 07h).

    That ruling is for constant barking, mind. And it's still not easy to get them to stop because there's quite a number of things you'll have to do in order to get sufficient material for a court order.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Rhywden yeah, there's not much that can really be done. Basically fines if we keep complaining and recording equipment verifies that it's too much. It's more likely to sour relationships even more



  • @Jaloopa said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Rhywden yeah, there's not much that can really be done. Basically fines if we keep complaining and recording equipment verifies that it's too much. It's more likely to sour relationships even more

    Fuck them. Seriously, your "relationship" has already hit rock-bottom, so I really wouldn't care about them any more.

    Because they're not caring about you in the first place.


  • FoxDev

    @Jaloopa said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Rhywden yeah, there's not much that can really be done. Basically fines if we keep complaining and recording equipment verifies that it's too much. It's more likely to sour relationships even more

    Your relationship with your neighbors is already hostile, and unless you misrepresented your side you did what you could to keep matters civil, when being polite did not produce results you escalated through proper channels and the other party stooped to outright hostility. in this case, fuck your relationship with your neighbors.

    seriously. you do what you need to do to advocate for yourself. be that finding a different place to live, or continuing to escalate matters with the relevant authorities. You need to advocate for yourself and stay on the high road, if your neighbors continue to take the low road then that's their choice, but if they go too low things will move from simply being a public nuisance to them committing actual crimes against you, and that is something you have a lot more power in stopping.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Nifty, so I am not the only one with these issues.

    Right after we moved in, I met all of our neighbors and all of them seemed great...except for one. Something about her was a bit...off. Unfortunately, she is the neighbor to my immediate left. But I try to give anyone a chance, so we talk a few times.

    I mention in one of the chats that I needed to buy a riding mower as the yard was just too much to push mow. She says she has a lawn service that does that and her riding mower has been parked ever since she hired them and says she might be interested in selling it.

    So I go look it over, it seems to be in good condition, but will crank but not run. I am the handy type, and I like solving puzzles, so she tells me to make her an offer. Now, if it had been some random Joe on craigslist, I would have offered $50, and maybe went up to $100, because it is not running and I have to put work in to it and at this point I have no fucking idea what is wrong with it. But, as this is a neighbor I am going to have to live next to I offer $200.

    She is taken aback by my apparent insultingly lowball offer of $200 on an older riding mower that if I went and bought its equivalent would have cost maybe $1,300 brand new. She gets pissy. Whatever, you should not have asked me to make you an offer then.

    Over the next week or so she keeps pushing the subject, trying to get me to up my offer. Finally I am honest with her that the only reason I even went that high was because she was my neighbor and honestly it is worth at most $100. I was very nice about it, but that kind of pissed her off.

    So a couple of weeks go by and I decide to start on a fence for our dogs. As we live in a subdivision that was started in the 50's, all of the property lines are very easy to discern as there are utility poles at every back property corner. No need for a survey. I will just look at the plot plan and stay 5' off of where I think the property line is. No big deal.

    Yeah, it became a big deal shortly. I have underground utilities located and for some fucked up reason she thinks that all of those flags denote where the property line is and confronts my wife and I about it. I try to explain to her that the person who marked that does not know and does not care where the property lines are, but she is not convinced. She wants a survey done.

    "Fine, I will have a survey done. You pay for it."

    "How much will that be?"

    "$250 a corner, we need two corners for that property line."

    "I will pay half."

    "No, you will pay all of it, because I don't need it. I am staying 5' off of where I believe the property line to be. I can guarantee you that the fence will be on my property."

    She is incensed. But whatever. Then things keep escalating. At the time I was still working in the construction world (goddamn, have we lived here that long??). It ended with this conversation:

    "Well, fine then, when do they start on your fence?"

    (she does not realize that I am the one building it)

    "We start augering holes in the morning. Bright and early."

    "Well, I am going to have a talk with your fence contractor. When I tell him there is a property line dispute, he won't start."

    "Just tell him that right now."

    "Well, who is your fence contractor? I will!"

    "I am. And I don't give a shit about you disputing the property line. As I said, we start augering holes in the morning."

    "Bu, bu, but you can't build your own fence!!"

    "Why the fuck not?"

    "What do you know about building fences?"

    "Fuck off. I build fucking cities for a living. I can build a fucking fence."

    Predictably, we start augering holes and then a police car shows up. He goes over to her house. Then comes over to us. He tells me that he told the neighbor that this was a civil matter and not a criminal one so please do not call 911 for such frivolous matters. Then proceeds to hang out with us for about 20 minutes and tell us all about the fence he built 15 years ago when they moved in to a new house.

    Since then I have had the cops called on me twice more, and had code enforcement and a few other governmental entities pay me a visit. All due to her.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Sounds like I'm TRWTF as I'm not in dispute with any of my neighbours… :)


  • Fake News

    @dkf Well then, sounds like you'd need to get one going as a public service.



  • @Polygeekery I think when I bought my house, I inherited a neighbor who had a grudge. It seemed like just about every year I'd get a letter warning of some code violation, which I'd make a half assed correction to and never had anything further come of it. Haven't been getting them as regularly, so maybe they figured out that their old nemesis moved out.

    Really I have no idea which neighbor it was, and I don't even know most of them. I keep to myself mostly.


  • Garbage Person

    @Polygeekery 5ft off the line for a fence? Jesus.



  • My past experience with Local Authorities over noise / environmental issues indicates to me that an act of god is more likely to resolve the issue before they do. Non-Government Organisations, on the other hand, are a different ball of wax.

    In the UK we have something called the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals): They don't have many teeth because there are few Laws that apply. What teeth they do have they use at the slightest opportunity and once they are in, they don't let go. Recently they have been getting bad press because of this and there have been many calls from many sources for them to be a bit more moderate. They subsequently announced that they will be, but there are few signs of it.

    The general impression I got was that concerns over the welfare of the animal(s) was more likely to provoke an extreme response.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @dkf said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    Sounds like I'm TRWTF as I'm not in dispute with any of my neighbours… :)

    As I said in the Status thread, if you don't have a batshit crazy neighbor that you know of, there is a good chance that you are the batshit crazy neighbor. ;)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    As I said in the Status thread, if you don't have a batshit crazy neighbor that you know of, there is a good chance that you are the batshit crazy neighbor. ;)

    I've got a neighbour who is a “character” but I'm not in dispute with him. Well, so long as I keep my stretch of the street tidy. No big deal.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Polygeekery or if every neighbour is batshit crazy. My dad never manages to stay friends with any neighbour for more than a year or two. At best they'll ignore each other; at worst there are shouting matches. Naturally, none of it is his fault


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Weng said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Polygeekery 5ft off the line for a fence? Jesus.

    I left out a lot of detail in an effort to keep the story brief. Initially I was going to stay back 18". I moved back to 5' when she started being a total cunt about the property line, just to be super safe. I fenced in 1/4 acre as it was. 10' in width wasn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Another story from the neighbor from hell:

    For most neighbors, if a twig or a tiny limb falls off of a tree in to your yard, you just pick it up and dispose of it. Not her. A year or two after the fence incident, I am mowing one day and there is a stack of twigs and other yard waste stacked up next to the tree on that side of the property. Hmmmmm, that's odd... So I ask my wife after I am mowing if she did it. Nope.

    Then I realize it, that crazy cunt had taken all the twigs that she thought fell off my tree that overhangs her property and instead of being a decent human being, she stacked them up next to my tree. Oh well, that's stupid, but I can deal with it.

    Then I had a really crappy day once and I came home in an off mood and went to mow. There had recently been a storm and there was the stack of limbs and twigs and shit. Then I pay more attention. They are all from her trees. My tree is deciduous, and all the ones on her property are evergreens and the limbs look very different between the two. That miserable fucking cunt had put her yard waste on my property, on purpose.

    Well, that side of my property is where her garage is. I have had a shit day, and that was the last straw, so I start throwing all of these limbs right in front of her garage door. I sort through all of them and 97% of it is her crap, and there is a lot of it. I threw every damn bit of it that came from an evergreen over right in front of her garage door so that she could not ignore it.

    Predictably, she comes home and gets irate. We end up in yet another shouting match, this time on my front porch. She accuses me of not liking her because she is black. I tell her that color has nothing to do with it and I don't like her because she is a miserable fucking crazy cunt and that I would hate a person of any color that acted the way she does.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    She accuses me of not liking her because she is black.

    Just because I know a few people will find it amusing due to what they know of me: My neighbor wears normal clothing to work, but as soon as she comes home she puts on a Dashiki.

    Like this:

    0_1472226818547_upload-83f0f110-103b-49ef-b59d-1b160252e8f4 https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/34/5e/0e/345e0ed268e81ef8d4173eec3e429ad9.jpg

    She and I are worse than oil and water. More like hypergolic compounds.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    normal clothing

    shirt normative shitlord



  • @Jaloopa check your clothing privilege.



  • @loose said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    The general impression I got was that concerns over the welfare of the animal(s) was more likely to provoke an extreme response.

    What do you expect in a country where the society for protection against cruelty to animals has the predicate ”Royal”, but the one for protection against cruelty to children doesn’t? 🚎


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Gurth you want to keep clear of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds. They're nasty


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    A milder story from the neighbor from hell:

    The side of my house that she is on is a side that we are really never in outside of the fence. So, basically, it can look like holy hell and it does not effect my family's enjoyment of our property. So, after years of living next to this miserable woman I just decided the hell with it. I trimmed the bushes last year and when it came time to clean up the massive amount of trimmings I would have had to go all the way around the house to get them in to the fence (or, I guess I could have thrown them over the fence.) so I just left them lay. We would not see it, it would not be seen from the street, and it would be an eyesore for her. I also quit mowing it. I did not rake the leaves. I just let it all go wild, and it is what she sees every time she pulls in her driveway.

    Then a couple of months ago, I am washing dishes and I see someone coming up the walk with a badge around their neck. I go outside and it is someone from code enforcement. He says they have gotten numerous complaints about tall weeds and grass on my property from my neighbors. He looks around and sees a freshly mowed lawn and says he is just making a courtesy stop to let me know. We talk for a minute and he asks if he can go look around the house. I agree, then he sees the patch she is talking about. By this point, there were really only a few weeds growing tall, the rest of the grass is smothered under the leaves and sticks and bush trimmings, etc.

    He says that since almost the entire yard is mowed, and it is only this one spot, there is really nothing he can do about it. If he keeps getting complaints though, they will have to come and do something about it and it will cost me almost $400 if they have to. I ask him what is in violation, and he says the weeds as they are over 12". I tell him briefly some of the crap this woman has put us through and tell him I want it to look as bad as possible but still remain in compliance. I ask, and he confirms, that if I keep everything under 12" in height there is literally nothing they can do about the rest. Since then, when I mow I take the weed eater over there and knock everything down to ~8" in height.

    They have been back out twice since then and confirmed that there is nothing in violation. Apparently if she keeps it up she will get some sort of citation for being a nuisance.

    And before anyone thinks that I am the only recipient of her attention, I am not. She got bitchy at her neighbor on the other side of her property because he mowed a little over the property line (who the fuck does that?? My neighbors could mow my entire lawn and I would be happy as could be.) So for an entire summer he left a foot wide swath on the property line unmowed. He has been dealing with her crazy shit for over a decade longer than I have.

    She also calls the cops anytime someone has a party in the neighborhood if someone parks in front of her house on the street. Everyone else tries to make sure that no one parks there. I tell people to go ahead and park there, because the police will not do anything about it anyway as they are parking in public space.



  • What kind of neighborhood are we talking here, Moore or Von Neumann?

    Filed Under: and what are your state change criteria?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Weng said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Polygeekery 5ft off the line for a fence? Jesus.

    Oh, I forgot something. A while back we had a party for our youngest's first birthday. One of our dear friends is a lawyer and he tells me that if I wanted to build a fence to block her out, got an accurate survey, and placed it directly on the property line, I could then bill her for half of the total cost of the fence that is on the property line and she would be required by law to pay for it as it would be a shared benefit situation.

    My wife hears this, looks directly at me, and tells me to not even think about it and that I better not kick the hornet's nest or she will be pissed.

    I really, really, want to though.

    Also, when I put in the fence, the utility locates showed that her cable and phone lines both run on to my property and then looped back to her house due to a wooded area being in the way back in the day. Those lines also fell directly under where I had laid out a fence post. Up until the time that the police car showed up, my helper and I had planned on hand digging that hole, or perhaps just putting in an extra post and straddling the lines.

    After the cop showed up, my plan changed. When we got to that post, I just augered right through them both. I called the utility locators, they came out and took a look at it, saw that it was across the property line and I never heard anything else about it. She was without cable or phone for over a week though.



  • I live in a block of flats in Brighton and generally I don't hear much from the neighbours.

    There is one neighbour I do hear from though. I'm not sure where said neighbour is - could even be the building out the back for all I know.

    Bastard starts playing guitar - slightly overamplified acoustic guitar - at around 9pm at night some weeknights. I wouldn't mind so much if he were a decent guitarist but we're still at the individual note-plucking and out-of-key stage.

    I love Stairway to Heaven. I don't love hearing it misplayed regularly.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    After the cop showed up, my plan changed. When we got to that post, I just augered right through them both. I called the utility locators, they came out and took a look at it, saw that it was across the property line and I never heard anything else about it. She was without cable or phone for over a week though.

    I hope I'll never live next to you, I'd live in constant fear of pissing you off.



  • @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    someone from code enforcement. ... I ask him what is in violation, and he says the weeds as they are over 12".

    :wtf: that's in 🇺🇸 The Land of Freedom?? I mean, I know about neighbourhood association and stuff, but that by itself is almost as crazy as your presidential candidate (won't say which one(s)).


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @asdf said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    After the cop showed up, my plan changed. When we got to that post, I just augered right through them both. I called the utility locators, they came out and took a look at it, saw that it was across the property line and I never heard anything else about it. She was without cable or phone for over a week though.

    I hope I'll never live next to you, I'd live in constant fear of pissing you off.

    I am actually a really nice neighbor. All of my neighbors, with one exception, are really great people and we help each other out. This woman though, is batshit crazy.


  • area_can

    I feel like there's really not much you can do with these sort of people. any sort of aggression (whether passive or not) is going to be seen by them as confirmation of their world view /shrug


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @bb36e Yeah. The ones I have dealt with have this perverted worldview where they think that everyone is out to get them. It ends up to be self-fulfilling. The really big problem with them and myself is that I tend to be pretty nice for a while and try to be diplomatic, but once that patience runs out all diplomacy goes out the window.

    Not that I become enthusiastically belligerent. I just take the stance of, "If you won't even try to be slightly bearable, why should I try to be courteous?"

    With all of the rest of my neighbors anything dealing with the property line has always been non-point. When I put in the fence there was also a shrub that was all overgrown and gnarly looking on my back property line. Technically, the stump of it was on my side of the property line, so I could have just hacked it out without worrying about any sort of legal problems. Instead, I was talking to that neighbor one night (who might be the coolest 60ish black guy I have ever met, who also has a new wife who is younger than I am. The man is living the good life.) and I asked if it would be OK if I trimmed it back to put the fence through. He said that the bush was really on my property, I could do with it whatever I wished and he thought it was an eyesore when the previous owners let it get overgrown. So one afternoon I started cutting it out and he came over and gave me a hand.

    That's the way things should be with neighbors.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    So one afternoon I started cutting it out and he came over and gave me a hand.

    Friendship is Magic! 👯


  • area_can


  • Notification Spam Recipient


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    So one afternoon I started cutting it out and he came over and gave me a hand.

    Friendship is Magic! 👯

    You Bronies just ruin everything. :-P


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    So one afternoon I started cutting it out and he came over and gave me a hand.

    Friendship is Magic! 👯

    You Bronies just ruin everything. :-P

    Only some. I'm part of the more awesome sector. ;)


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    Only some. I'm part of the more awesome sector.

    Isn't that a bit like being the most awesome turd? :-P


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    Only some. I'm part of the more awesome sector.

    Isn't that a bit like being the most awesome turd? :-P

    A rainbow turd is still... colorful? IDK. It's not like that's the sole thing that defines me anyways. Just one of the more recent. ;)



  • @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    Well, that side of my property is where her garage is. I have had a shit day, and that was the last straw, so I start throwing all of these limbs right in front of her garage door. I sort through all of them and 97% of it is her crap, and there is a lot of it. I threw every damn bit of it that came from an evergreen over right in front of her garage door so that she could not ignore it.
    Predictably, she comes home and gets irate. We end up in yet another shouting match, this time on my front porch. She accuses me of not liking her because she is black. I tell her that color has nothing to do with it and I don't like her because she is a miserable fucking crazy cunt and that I would hate a person of any color that acted the way she does.

    As I said in the Status thread, if you don't have a batshit crazy neighbor that you know of, there is a good chance that you are the batshit crazy neighbor. ;)



  • @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    he says the weeds as they are over 12"

    I really need to pull mine... They're considerably taller... (side of the house, I'm on a corner) Did finally clear them out of the front yard.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @cartman82 I see what you did there...



  • @Arantor said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    I love Stairway to Heaven. I don't love hearing it misplayed regularly.

    No Stairway? Denied!


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Dragnslcr Party on Wayne.



  • @Dragnslcr when he first started, the only way I actually knew what it was was because he was singing along. The tune was that mangled I actually couldn't tell.

    I figure another year, two years and it might be listenable.



  • @Polygeekery Party on, Polygarthery!


  • BINNED

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    That's the way things should be with neighbors.

    Trimming the bush together?


  • Fake News

    @Luhmann said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    That's the way things should be with neighbors.

    Trimming the bush together?

    Dear Penthouse...



  • @Arantor said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    I figure another year, two years and it might be listenable.

    Nah, probably not. Some people will never have any musical ability, no matter how much they practice.

    Trust me on this - I'm a percussionist.



  • @Dragnslcr We've gone from musically illiterate to the needs-help category, so it's possible we'll get to something sane one day.

    I have faith 🙏



  • @Polygeekery said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Dragnslcr Party on Wayne.

    Drains World! Drains World!

    Party on Mario! Party on, Luigi!



  • @Arantor said in Neighbors are TR:wtf::

    @Dragnslcr when he first started, the only way I actually knew what it was was because he was singing along. The tune was that mangled I actually couldn't tell.

    I figure another year, two years and it might be listenable.

    Maybe you can passively agressively slip a book about guitar playing under his door.

    ... INB4: this is the UK. In houses I've visited you could slip the effin' "war and peace" under the door.


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