Throwaway account because my regular is connected to my work life…
I live in a four apartment building, and am fine with two of my neighbors but my downstairs neighbor gets apoplectic at very small noises (or maybe I’m noisy? I no longer know). She has called my landlord (an anonymous company) twice before over noise from me, and they tell me a very glib, “be careful, ne” and leave it at that.
My partner visited me tonight, and around 9:30pm my downstairs neighbor noticed, became extremely angry, and called the police. The cops didn’t even knock on my door, and just left after putting the neighbor back into her apartment, but it was very noisy outside my building for close to an hour, until about 10:30PM (what I’d call “quiet hours” in this area). The lights in my neighbors’ apartments were on the whole time. I obviously feel bad for disrupting them, so do I get them an apology gift, or just pretend nothing happened?
8 comments
Depends what the noise is. Why not go downstairs and ask what noises they are heating. Is it footfalls? Scraping of chairs on the floor? The sound of the water running? I’m sure you can come to some arrangement depending on the noise. This would be better than an apology tour (or maybe combined together?).
Personally I’ve only had above apartment using vacuum cleaner at 1am to deal with one time. That stopped after I complained.
Walking about and making noise would be challenging to stop. Although slippers might help if you aren’t using them and it’s that noise downstairs are hearing.
The only gift you need to give is to complain to your management company about the police causing a racker with your clearly insane downstairs neighbor.
So, to put it together, you have a mentally unstable neighbour who has decided to bully a foreigner and now you’re going to apologise to others?
You don’t have to apologise to anybody. You didn’t do anything wrong. Normal living noises from people walking, visiting and doing normal things is something you expect from living in a multi apartment building, so trying to be extra careful is also not something you need to do.
Don’t be an asshole but also don’t let others abuse you.
I learned my lesson after living in an apartment here before. Its all about luck. If you want to depend on luck, then okay to live in an apartment, but the chances of getting a bad neighbor is extremely high depending on who you are and where you are. If renting a house is an option for you, stay away from apartments and even in houses you could get some bad luck neighbor.
Homemade cupcakes habanero flavor with wasabi cream.
The neighbour definitely has a screw loose.
The obvious solution here is to invest in a few sets of night vision goggles. Then, when the looney neighbour sees all of your lights are off, they’ll think that you’ve already gone to bed.
I’m assuming it’s to the next-door neighbors, not the crazy ones, that you want to apologize to, right?
I don’t think that it should be necessary; it’s not you who caused the whole racket. The blame lies with the downstairs neighbor.
That’s not to say that it’s a terrible idea; your neighbors will probably appreciate it. I just think it’s unnecessary.
give that insecure neighbor a box of cheap tea, let them figure out the idiom and craze with it.
You are not guilty at all.
May be just you and your partner trembled the floor so loudly the downstair neighbor got jelly and went mad