People Tell Their Stunning Revenge Stories
43. Noisy Neighbor Got A Taste Of Her Own Medicine
“I lived in a ground floor apartment for about five years. A neighbor moved in above me for approximately six months. She was quite the noisy night owl! She slept during the day, and around 10 PM the music would be cranked so high my ceiling would vibrate.
She often had people over too, loud rowdy guests screaming, laughing, fighting, sometimes very loud moaning (the woman was a screamer). This would go on until about 5 AM then everything would start to quiet down, and the day was silent – I couldn’t hear a sound coming from the apartment above.
So she was obviously sleeping. When she first moved in it was just occasionally, but then it became almost every night.
She only lasted six months. All the neighbors with adjacent apartments were complaining about her to the landlord. I approached them a couple of times asking her to keep it down: that only fueled her to be even more clamorous, and loud.
I was getting annoyed.
Finally, I had had my fill when my daughter Maggie, newborn son Gabriel, and I were kept up almost all night. I had to let Maggie stay home from school and sleep. I know I could have called the police, but I went another route.
The next night was no different… At around 4 AM things started to quiet down. My bedroom was right below her bedroom. I got all my blankets, sheets, pillows, and towels, piling them up on my bed until the mound was almost touching the ceiling. I plugged my CD player in with an extension cord, placing it on top of the pile with the speakers facing and almost rubbing up against the ceiling, which was her bedroom floor.
With another extension cord, I plugged my alarm clock in and added that to the top of the pile.
I got ready to spend the day away, put the kids in the car. Returned to my apartment put this CD in: ‘Significant Other,’ by Limp Bizkit.
I set my alarm for 30 minutes thus just when the music stopped the alarm clock would go off. I didn’t go home until about 9 PM. When I got home the alarm clock was still going off! I hardly heard a peep from her after that and she moved out a couple of months later.”
42. Don't Mess With The Snowmen
“When I was at University we had a day where it snowed and settled on the ground which was rare for our area.
Since this was such a rare occurrence there were no snowploughs or anything for the whole city so work and University and school were cancelled for the day. We were outside enjoying the snow and the neighbours’ young kids were building lots of little snowmen out on the edge of the park across the street.
Some jerk comes along drifting his piece of trash car along the street and sees the little snowmen the kids have made and totally takes them all out on purpose. The kids are upset but they build some more and it’s all good. And then this jerk comes back along the street and takes them out AGAIN.
So cue the revenge. We figured the guy would come back again at some point. Just down the street from where they were playing there was a small concrete pole to stop cars driving into the park. So we helped the kids disguise it as a snowman.
After a while, we went back inside and forgot about it. A couple of hours later we hear this big thud and then a whole lot of angry yelling, and the jerk had come back down the street and went to take out the snowman and has slammed the back wheels of his car into the hidden concrete pole, totally messing up his rim, and probably doing some damage to the chassis as well.
Jerk.”
41. Stop Stealing My Newspaper
“I used to live in an apartment building and the newspaper delivered to my door every morning.
(This was a long, long time ago.) After a few months, my paper started disappearing from my door. There were only 3 other apartments on my floor and we were on the top floor, so logically it had to be someone on my floor. It happened several days in a row and I was getting annoyed.
So, one morning, I got up extra early and waited until I heard the paper person drop the paper in front of my door. I quietly opened the door and took the paper inside. Then I filled the sheets of newspaper with sugar and carefully placed them back outside my door.
Later, I went out to check. The paper was gone and there was a trail of sugar leading to the apartment down the hall. However, it seemed that most of the sugar ended up inside the thief’s apartment. My paper was never taken again.”
40. Demand I Make You The Dinner You Want? I'll Burn It To A Crisp
“This happened a long time ago but still tickles me. The year was 1971 and I got married for the first time. Things were a lot different back then for women. We had just gotten married the day before and the next morning my husband woke up and told me he wanted cabbage, sausage, and potatoes for dinner.
At this point, I had never eaten sausage and was never going to strangely enough and never had cabbage. I told him I didn’t eat those things and he simply told me that that’s what I was fixing.
So I unpacked the new pots and pans, placed the biggest pot on the stove, and added water, cabbage, and potatoes with seasonings.
I turned it on high. When everything inside the pot, which was Teflon, burnt to a crisp I still left it there until it completely ruined the pot.
When he got home I told him going forward I would be cooking dinners that we both could eat.
As we have been going out for almost 3 years I clearly knew what kind of foods we both liked. He was seriously mad. I calmly stuck to my guns and told him he wasn’t going to bully me and just because we were married doesn’t mean he got to tell me what to do.
The marriage lasted a year and a half. I couldn’t wait to get away.”
Another User Comments:
“My old college friend married up to an intelligent, kind, lovely woman. They were both teachers. Sincere young people. But not long after the wedding, knowing chili was one of his favorite meals, she made it as a surprise for him for dinner.
Dumb jerk that he was, he spent the entire meal telling her how to make it better. They’ve been married for more than 40 years and have two beautiful adult daughters, but when he wants chili, he has to make it himself, because she has never made it since.” gadousti
39. Husband And I Reported The Party
“When my ex-husband and I were first married, I worked 11p-7a at the local hospital while he was in graduate school.
We lived in an OK-looking apartment that was about 15-20 to my work and campus. Actually, it was in another town, but they butted against each other so you really couldn’t tell the two apart. One note, I was trying to take a nap before work, but our downstairs neighbors had a party at the pool area that our apartment overlooked and it had spilled out all over the front of the apartment complex.
Usual students, loud, drinking, yelling and they had totally blocked my car in so I couldn’t get out of the parking lot to go to work. I was pretty mad and I knew I was going to be late, so I went back upstairs and told my husband my predicament.
He came downstairs and we started to ask around about the owner of the car. Very difficult since everyone was hammered.
Finally, we found the person and I drove to work. My husband was just as mad because he had class the next day. This was not the weekend.
So when I got to work, I called the cops and told them there was an out of control party, with too many people, drinking, broke some pool equipment (IDK if they did, but it sounded good) and to come quickly because they were breaking glass bottles all over the parking lot.
That was a no-no, according to the rent agreement. My husband said the cops came, made the party stop, gave them a ticket for drinking and disorderly conduct. They had come up to several apartments to confirm what was going on, trying to find the caller.
Never had another party there again.”
38. Good Thing They Didn't Have Surveillance Cameras
“Many years ago I bought a house with really nice people all around me.
It was an old neighborhood where most of the houses had been renovated. My house was one of the few that hadn’t been renovated and I worked on it for 3 years. I loved my house and my neighborhood. The folks on the driveway side of my house lived on a corner with about 6 feet of space on either side of them and a tiny backyard that was large enough to have only a 2 car garage and a parking pad immediately in front of their garage.
The guy was a junk collector. They couldn’t park in or use their garage because it was full of junk but he kept bringing more stuff home—non-working washing machines, lawnmowers, go-carts—mostly something with a motor on it that he intended to fix and sell.
He never fixed anything. In addition to a full-time job as a maintenance employee, he owned a laundromat and another rental property. The man didn’t have time, only an obsession and good intentions. Eventually, his junk started drifting onto my yard. I’d say something about his stuff in my yard and he’d be apologetic, promise to move it, usually would move it, but his pattern of behavior continued.
I learned from other neighbors that this was common for him. My house had been a rental property for years before I bought it and renovated, so he was used to renters next door. I got tired of it. One week when I knew he and his wife had just left for vacation I hired some guys and had everything that was on and near my property moved to a facility that took junk metal. He asked me about it after they returned home and I told him that anything on my property was mine to do with as I wished. He was not happy but it didn’t take long before he brought more junk home.
The next time they were gone for a few days I cleaned out everything that had been sitting between their house and mine, about six feet wide of their property. The next time, I cleaned their front yard.
Back then exterior cameras would have been expensive and obvious so I wasn’t worried that they knew but couldn’t prove it was me.
It was a lot of work and a cost involved to get it moved but it was so worth it. Eventually, I noticed he stopped bringing junk home. While I never knew for sure as she spent no time outside, I think his wife was grateful.
My actions may have been petty, but everyone in the neighborhood benefited from a cleaned-up yard. I think he may have been a beneficiary, too. How stressful to continually create a to-do list that never got worked on, only added to.”
37. Nothing Is Off-Limits, You Say? Let Me Call My Dad
“The high school I went to had the oldest rivalry in the state I grew up in. The week prior to the football game was mayhem, filled with bonfires, fights, and an all-out, nothing-off-limits prank war.
Some quick examples: one year they burned their school name into our football field, so we let a herd of goats loose on theirs; they stole all the letters of the ornate wooden sign at ours, so we took their mascot statue and sunk it in their campus pond (they were pirates, so it was fitting); they stole our goal posts so we dyed their pool blue with a mix of Kool-aid and Jell-O… it was insane.
Anyways, my next-door neighbors had a son that went to my school, but his significant other went to the rival. During Spirit week, everyone decorated their cars with paint, flags, streamers, etc. In my senior year, his significant other and some of her friends started targeting me.
Over the course of the week, I had to deal with around 6dozen eggs, shaving foam, more tp than I care to estimate. After the first night, I started parking at the close end of the driveway instead of on the street (4 cars in our fam at the time), but that night they egged all our cars, not just mine, and let the air out of all the tires.
It went on for 4 nights straight, with me having to get up before sunrise to wash all the cars and use the air pump to refill the tires.
Now, my father is very conservative and doesn’t back vengeance in any way, but he was annoyed. The eggs and foam ruined the paint on 3 of the cars, including his new caddy, so he told me quite clearly that as long as I didn’t get caught, I could get payback.
The night of the game came, and they won, as per the norm, so the girl and all her friends were at my neighbor’s house partying. With all the music and whatnot, we could’ve set a nuke off and they wouldn’t have heard it, but a couple of friends and I played ninja.
With a combo of baloney slices, lifesavers, and nail polish remover, we turned her lovely little beemer into a polka-dotted nightmare. For the uninitiated, baloney eats thru the clearcoat and the grease usually prevents it from being easily washed off; with the Lifesavers, it’s lick em and stick em and if you try to remove them without dissolving them, it takes the paint with it down to primer; and of course, acetone will eat thru everything down to the metal and can be used quite effectively with a sponge brush.
Her screaming woke us all up the next morning. While my dad didn’t approve of some of the drawing and word choice, he gave me a discreet high five and said he had gotten his money’s worth.
Ironically, my first college roommate went to the rival school.
We shared many laughs about the crazy antics of our class and agreed to not damage one another’s stuff. Before I moved to the SW, I made a point to go home every year for the game, so my kids would get to see where mom spent 4 amazing years.”
36. Hey, Lady! I Think You Left Your Bag
“I watched my upstairs neighbor in an apartment complex take her large dog out to relieve himself. Mind you, the poor dog was stuck inside all the time, these people would bring him out to do his ‘business’ and then drag him back inside as soon as he was done.
On this particular morning, I watched the woman outside my window hurriedly lead the poor creature over to a grassy patch in front of the building to take a ‘doggy dump.’ She bagged the large steaming pile and while yanking her pet back towards her door tossed it in the landscaping next to my patio!
After she went upstairs, I went out, grabbed the baggy, (it was soft and squishy), and shoved it through their mailslot. It landed inside with the most satisfying plop! I had to leave for work so I never got to see their reactions. Served them right!”
35. The Gas They're Using Is Mine
“At one of my military postings, captains shared a duplex with each other. The units were mirror images of each other. We actually had no real neighborly issues with the other family. I fixed all of their three children’s bikes, straightening out handlebars, putting oil on the chains, air in the tires, adjusting seat height, and minor things like that.
They were very grateful since their military father did not own any tools. I was doing standard maintenance on my kids’ bikes so it was no big deal.
They were rather needy and borrowed our vacuum cleaner all the time. One of the boys would come and get it and drag it across the front yard from our front door to theirs.
It was an upright vacuum and the small wheels started getting caked with dirt from being rolled across the yard. It was rather annoying to have to clean the dirt from our vacuum before we could vacuum our own home.
The Army issues one traditional gasoline-powered push lawnmower to each duplex.
The mower had been stowed in my unit’s carport when my family moved in. Each family just took it whenever their side of the yard needs mowing.
While the Army provides the lawnmower, it’s up to the residents to buy the gas. I bought a small 1½ gallon gas can for $5 at the post exchange gas station and would fill up the can when I needed to mow.
The other family never bought gas for the mower. They would just take the mower and use it until they finished their lawn or it ran out of gas. They would then leave it in the yard where it ran out of gas. It would stay there until I needed the mower and brought it back to my carport to fill it up.
On the backside of each carport, was a small storage shed for various yard tools like rakes, h**s, snow shovels, and room to store kids’ bikes. This is where I kept my gas can. Their kids had seen my gas can in there when I fixed their bikes.
So they started to help themselves to my gas to mow their yard. Usually, it was no big deal, but when I would go to mow my yard, both the mower and gas can would be empty. While the cost of the gas wasn’t a lot, it was just a pain to have to get gas every time I needed to mow.
So I started filling my gas can with just enough gas to put in the mower to mow my yard. God, that was so petty to just put less than a dollar’s worth of gasoline in that can instead of filling it up, but I had just had enough of their mooching week after week for years.
So after I would finish mowing, there might be enough gas left inside for them to start their lawn, but definitely not enough for them to mow their entire yard. Then when they would get my can, they’d see it was empty and then not finish mowing their yard.
I’d see the mower left in the middle of the yard and roll it back under the carport before nightfall since I was responsible for the mower.
One weekend after their yard was getting overgrown, the mother asked me about where I got gas for the mower.
I told her I bought a can at the gas station and filled up the can when I filled up my car. Then it dawned on her that they had been using gas I bought all these years.”
34. I Closed My Neighbor's Business
“A little context, they were operating a commercial-grade business in a residential area. A bit of a zoning violation, one I overlooked until the time they got crass with me.
I was mending a fence on my lot. They came up the hill, which was not maintained on their side, and informed me that the fence was on their property, when in fact the survey showed otherwise.
I stated my intentions to keep my dog out but they decided to become difficult.
I walked off quietly, with a dismissive wave, and immediately reported their zoning violation to the city. I made a few more calls for good measure.
The next week they removed the signs from their ‘business’.
I suppose referring to the online Google maps listing for their catering business was effective. Previously I’d smell them cooking but since that week, it stopped, never to return.
Also, I should mention that cottage laws in my state do not allow food to be prepared ready-to-eat offsite in un-inspected commercial kitchens, much less one that wouldn’t pass muster as it is in a home without proper fixtures.
I imagine my call to the health department didn’t help either. Had they been making jams and jellies this wouldn’t have been a problem.
I’ve often wondered what happened… if only out of morbid curiosity.
Following the removal of their signage, I removed their listing from Google maps with great, petty enjoyment.
After all, by Google’s definition, they were ‘closed’ so I reported them as such. Therefore, I ‘closed’ their business.
This was several years ago, I haven’t seen them since, especially since I mind my own business but maybe they moved on.
I have since mended my fence.”
33. I Trained The Neighbors Like A Dog
“Ages ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and TV was coming from the sky as opposed from the wall, I was studying for the closing exam for Electrodynamics.
That was the hardest one at the end of the sixth semester. Basically, if you made it you had to beat the life out of the dean for you not to graduate. And yep, hard it was…
We were living in a trashy neighborhood and our neighbor and his father were dedicated heavy drinkers and the son was also a burglar (not related to the story).
The walls were paper thin. They had their TV set against the wall, where my table was where I tried to read the books. But I could not for the father was watching the TV in full sound volume 24×7. Tried to ask nicely but to no avail.
So I had my revenge. I was studying electrical engineering so creating a small oscillator tuned to the proper frequency was easy. I also modulated it so when switched on the TV displayed a white noise and the sound was a kind of roaring…
So I waited and when I heard the freaking TV, I switched my little device on, and heard the sound go arrrghghgghhghg….
The guy was shouting for his son, to help him to adjust the TV. When he was fiddling with it, I slowly turned down the output of the circuit, so he proudly told his father how smart he is. He left the room (they were loud so I could hear the whole conversation).
Ten seconds later, and I switched it on again. And off. It was like training a dog; if I remember correctly, it took around a day to train them that if they watch the TV too loud, it will go amok.”
32. I Gave Back The Neighbor's Cans
“I once offered a dog-walking neighbor some dog treats my Yorkie did not like. The entire thing blew up catastrophically. The woman was a nut job and I later learned was a trouble maker even at her son’s school.
We had words, next her husband came to my house and challenged me, he too was a bully and would throw aluminum drink cans on my lawn. One day he dumped about 20 cans, I guess he had been saving them up, and this would be his grand moment.
I knew who it was, so I gathered all the cans, punctured every one, laced them all together with string (about 60′ long) then late at night, wrapped them around his mailbox. I never saw a can on my lawn after that.”
31. Trespassers Got Victimized By My Poison Ivy Plants
“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 using this ‘shortcut’ these kids began to ruin my hedges, write 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 with my family went on a vacation to the countryside at a known resort. When we were there we were told 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 that I dug up. (I had long pants, long sleeve shirt, and gloves.) 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 kids used this route.
Well, when these plants started to grow, with some Miracle Grow© I could not wait until the ‘shortcut’ was being used. One day a group of teens (about 5 or 6) 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 that were 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.”
30. I Was The Nuisance, And I Still Am
“I live in a small friendly town where many people know each other.
My 4 immediate street neighbors and I all have a perfect working relationship where we leave each other alone but nod hello and are appropriately neighborly. We help shovel each other out after snowstorms and other stereotypical Canadian things.
Some of my further-down street neighbors are not so easy to live near.
They claim the smoke from our legal backyard autumn campfires bothers them, so they come down and complain about it. We always put it out, grumble a bit, and go to bed.
They live on a perpendicular street to mine 4 houses up, roughly 200 meters away from where the campfires occur, as I have a double lot.
We only do fires in the late summer and autumn, when it’s cool enough to enjoy a fire. My brother brings his guitar, we get marshmallows for the kids, wine or whisky for the grown-ups, and chill until about 10 pm. We have a chimney-type metal grated fire pit, and never make fires during a drought.
Also, we use seasoned, split logs, and never burn garbage or treated wood, so it’s a pretty clean burn. We speak quietly and extinguish the coals thoroughly so there’s no offensive stink afterward.
It’s hard to respect these neighbors extreme sensitivity to the smoke because I’ve walked to their neighbor’s place to return a wandering dog one night when we were grilling sausages around the fire (nice try, puppy!), and though I could tell that there was a campfire somewhere nearby, I could honestly say there wasn’t a huge cloud of smoke that made it hard to breathe.
I am asthmatic, and I don’t like smoke either.
I was convinced these guys were nitpicking.
Still, we tried to only make fires on evenings when their car was gone, as it often was. I didn’t want to be a nuisance, but I have the right to live on my land.
One October evening last fall I saw their car pull in around 9:45 pm, nearing the typical end of our fire night. No one was in a rush to get going, though, so we sat around and enjoyed the blazing coals.
Somewhere near 10 pm, I hear a stick snap in the culvert behind where my husband was sitting.
The fire was between us, the glow of the coals basically all I could see, but it was obvious my husband and brother had heard the sound as well. My brother put down his guitar and started sharpening a stick with his buck knife, and my husband put his hand on the ax.
I was sitting in a folding camp chair, holding a sleeping toddler, useless. Whoever was creeping around the wooded culvert was standing directly behind our hedge, making a poor job of spying on us, but freaking me out a tiny little bit. I assumed it was our fussy neighbor, but who could tell?
Suddenly, the roar of a huge truck could be heard getting louder, and flashing lights could be seen as the truck slowed to a stop in front of our house. The b****y volunteer firefighters had been called. We met them in front of our house and they apologized for disturbing us, but they’d received a complaint about fire and they were here to check on things.
They saw that everything was up to code, asked if we needed help extinguishing the coals, and wished us a good evening. I followed them back to the truck and asked if the call had been made anonymously. They couldn’t tell us that. He did say that we were within our rights to have a fire unless it was bothering a neighbor, in which case we would have to extinguish it.
He was really sympathetic and I felt awful that these hardworking people had been dragged out on a weekend over such pettiness.
So we pointed the hose at the hedge and made very sure that the fire and all surrounding areas were thoroughly absolutely extinguished.
It’s entirely possible the creepy annoying spy got a bit wet, but who can say for sure?”
29. I'm Sure You Don't Want Granny Marching Over Again
“I am 71 with a chronic illness. There is a frat house next door.
Every few years the tenants are changed. I always greet the new group and welcome them with cookies or home-baked bread. I raised four sons so am pretty tolerant. There is generally a noisy party after a few days. I tolerate it without being a jerk.
Then talk with them sometime in the next week. I let them know they kept me up with their noise and explain my chronic condition requires sleep. I tell them I would use noise-canceling headphones but have a handicapped child I need to be able to hear.
I am warm, friendly, and understanding but I set my tolerance limits.
I respectfully negotiate a decent hour for them to take the party inside. I warn them there will be consequences for late-night parties. I say the first incidence will be an irate granny marching over to their door at three AM, not a pretty sight.
For the second incident, I will call their landlord. He donates their room to the college sports teams and is pretty strict. The third incident will be the cops. They know they will lose their sports scholarship for problems with the police. Our noise ordinance curfew is ten PM.
I generally set the time frame at 11 PM.
So this spring’s big party. I followed my procedure and on the second incident walked over in my PJs and pounded on the door. They had taken the party inside but set their speakers in the window-rattling my house like a car’s bass player at full volume.
They were so apologetic that I got tickled and ended up on their porch laughing. I love young people. They shut the windows now and everything has been fine. They are my neighbors, entitled to respect, cordiality, and a helping hand. They borrow shovels and gear.
I don’t believe in revenge. I do believe in respect and courtesy.”
28. We Stopped Mowing The Land Between Our Houses
“We have a neighbor who moved in and promptly began to build a huge horse barn. That’s fine, but there are deed restrictions on these lots, and barns have to be set 25′ behind the back of the house.
These folks ignored that, and sited their barn 20′ off the lot line, right between our houses. The barn is closer to our house than theirs, and it’s huge.
We worked out a verbal agreement with them that they would plant trees to cover the eyesore.
When we asked them to put it in writing, they had a fit. They would not sign anything saying that they would plant these trees because it implied that we didn’t trust them.
They went from neighbor to neighbor and had them all sign paperwork to vacate the deed restrictions.
People signed because that meant it was easier to do their own projects—they never thought about the fact that their neighbors would now be able to do their projects, too. The documents were so badly written that instead of vacating the restrictions, some people vacated their actual deeds (ha ha ha).
We gave up. No sense fighting stupid/crazy. What did we do? We stopped mowing the strip between our houses. My husband calls it his ‘trash tree nursery.’ It’s slowly growing crappy trees—mostly Bradford pear and long-thorn hawthorn. The grasses are waist-high. As you drive by, you can’t tell whose weeds they are, either.
They sent us a letter saying that it didn’t bother them. I figure if you go out of your way to send a letter stating something doesn’t bother you… it really bothers you.”
27. Wars Between Family Neighbors Didn't End
“I have a number of relatives who have gotten involved in literally decades of tit-for-tat retaliation against lifelong neighbors.
It’s a terrible, unhappy-making way to live. One guy ‘got even’ with one of my aunts by blowing his dried leaves into her yard on a regular basis, long after the score should have been evened…
Then there was the family with the noisy dog right behind her yard who would let ‘Bandit’ run loose and dump all over her well-manicured lawn.
So, she collected all the accumulated turds over a period of a couple of months, put them in a gift box, and mailed it all back to them.
I had an uncle who had a standing petty-fest with his next-door neighbors to the south of him.
There was no end to the accusations, back and forth, as to who was the most disrespectful and/or thoughtless/careless neighbor. My uncle would throw rotten tomatoes from his garden over the fence and into the neighbor’s yard as a way to register his complaint.
The neighbor, in turn, would clip big dead branches and limbs off his huge maple tree and let them fall into my uncle’s back yard. And then…
My uncle passed away last year and it’s only his daughter living in the house now.
The neighbor goes to his second-floor windows and ‘spies’ on my cousin as she works in her yard. It unnerved her so much that she had a new, much taller fence put in between the two yards in the hopes that it will discourage him.
So, now he’s threatening to report her to the city for installing a fence that exceeds the height limit. It never ends…
It wouldn’t be so bad if that was the worst of it, but, I kid you not, other family members have had to endure in-depth, lengthy reports and accompanying diatribe of each and every escalating episode, ad nauseam, literally for dozens of years.
Some relatives wouldn’t even invite the worst warmongers to their holiday parties. Although, as kids, my cousins and I thought the stories and the outrage over such petty ‘insults’ were hilarious and we would listen for hours, egging them on just to see how red in the face they could get.
I strongly advise anyone considering puncturing a basketball and throwing it back over the fence… Please! Think twice, because once you get that ball rolling and it starts gaining momentum and growing ever-larger, you will never be able to stop it because no one will be the first to wave the white flag of surrender.
NOTE: Almost 30 yrs. ago, my husband and I found our current home while attending Open Houses every Saturday and Sunday for months. It was the only one we’d seen that had a backyard on either side with the front of the adjoining homes facing the opposite way toward the next street behind ours (Yes some pretty long backyards, throwbacks to a wealthier time in this older section of town).
As soon as I saw the privacy afforded ‘our’ house with no next-door neighbors to contend with (The yards stretched so far back from the house proper that no one ever really went there. They were more like back lots than backyards), I didn’t hesitate to whisper to my husband—Let’s TAKE IT!
We’ve never had the slightest difficulty with our immediate neighbors who are way across the other side of the relatively wide street or the ones two lots down from us on either side. We will never leave here unless someday we decide to ditch humans altogether and move up into the mountains.
For in-town living, this is as private as it gets.”
26. Be A Terrible Sister? No Cinnamon Rolls For You
“I’m currently visiting my parents for the holidays. Unfortunately, my tyrant of a sister is here and her antics are in full swing.
She has always been a hateful bully and she was so mean to me last night that I wound up crying in the bathroom.
My parents do nothing when she attacks me or others, and the only person who defends me from her wrath is our older sibling.
Our family has a tradition of cinnamon rolls and mimosas on Christmas morning, where we all play cards at the breakfast table.
My family also has a rule that Christmas festivities can’t start until everyone is awake and Christmas breakfast can’t be served until everyone is awake. But you can’t wake anyone up!
My older sibling won’t arrive until after lunch, so naturally, I am staying in bed as long as possible.
I can already hear my sister complaining down the hall that I’m still in bed but I don’t care. I’m going to stay in bed until at least noon out of spite.
No cinnamon rolls for you.
Edit: I ended up leaving.
I packed all my stuff and left before opening presents or Christmas dinner. My parents freaked out, my mom started crying, it felt AWFUL. I still feel awful. Now both parents are giving me the silent treatment saying I ruined Christmas.”
25. Want Your Sandwich Now? Hope You Like It Soggy
“I love my 6 yr old. Truly I do. But like most kids that age, he has absolutely 0 patience and seems to think the world revolves around him. Combined, it makes for a lot of trying moments.
One morning I was hand washing a bunch of dishes when my 6yo came in demanding a sandwich right away.
I told him to give me a moment to rinse the soap off my hands and I would have his sandwich in just a few minutes.
Oh no. No no no no no, this would not do for my child. A few minutes was too long for my child.
He demanded his sandwich RIGHT. NOW.
Your wish is my command, malicious compliance ensues!
With my hands still dripping with soap, I grab the bread and some peanut butter (luckily it was the end of the bread and peanut butter, so I could afford to be messy with things).
I made that sandwich, making sure it was good and soggy and soapy before handing it to him, then went immediately back to washing dishes.
He looked at his sandwich in horror and sadness. He came up to me and quietly said, ‘Mama? Can you please make me a sandwich without soap?
I’ll wait for you.’
This happened a couple of months ago, and now whenever I tell him to give me a moment he actually does wait for me.
(Note: no, I would never actually let him eat a soapy sandwich. If he were to have attempted to I would have stopped him.)”
24. You Want All The Channels? Have Fun With That
“I used to work for a major telecom company in Western Canada taking customer service phone calls. I had someone call in to set up service with our internet and television services. Internet was always pretty straight forward it was just a matter of selecting their speed. TV was a bit more complicated.
On the one hand, the service was not physically turned off at their house and they already owned their own digital equipment so we were able to do what we called a self install. I just had to set up the account, add all their equipment and channels, and then post the order without creating a work ticket.
But we hit a snag on the most complicated part of the process: channel selection.
I was explaining that the 3-month introductory offer they had seen advertised only covered our base level package and what channels that included, and the customer said she wanted all the channels.
I explained that with the wide variety of channels we carried that was not efficient or cheap and offered to go over her family’s needs but she said she had to go out and when she got back in an hour she expected their service to be working.
Well, the customer gets what the customer asks for; ALL THE CHANNELS. HBO, Superchannel, and the international Rugby/soccer/cricket network? Sure. All 4 adult movie channels at $25/month each, why wouldn’t they want those? Every foreign language specialty channel, if that is what she asked for that was what I would give her.
When I was done the total cost of the package was over $600/month. I made sure to detail in the notes that the caller requested ALL CHANNELS and when I advised against that the customer declined to discuss their specific needs and disconnected the call stating they expected their service on the same day, I even emailed her a list of the channels they were subscribed to.
When the caller received the first bill (For nearly two months’ worth of service since we billed in advance) her husband called in irate. After reading my notes and coming to talk to me my team leader struck a compromise that they would waive the minimum one month period for adding and removing a channel but the customer still ended up being billed over $100 for the one week that they had all the channels.
I got a verbal warning from my manager (My TL’s supervisor) to be more thorough in the future when discussing the caller’s needs but nothing else. How I was supposed to do that after they hung up the phone over the very idea of clarifying I still to this day don’t know.”
23. The Couple Had A Different Taste In Music
“I used to live in a little close, semicircular pattern to the street. It consisted of six sets of semidetached houses – I don’t know what they’re called in the US, two houses joined together.
My next-door neighbors (not joined on to our house) had a New Year party.
They didn’t tell any of the neighbors about it and, of course, none of us were invited.
They played loud music, I don’t know how they managed to think, never mind hear each other talk.
It was, let’s say, quite noisy all night.
Around 3 am, they must’ve been barely able to see each other through the smoke in the house, so they opened the living room windows.
We’d thought the so-called music couldn’t have been any louder, but it was.
A couple of days later, my then-husband and I were chatting with the couple whose house joined on to these noisy neighbors.
We asked how they’d coped, it was bad enough for us.
It turned out that they were into quite a different type of music to the people in between us.
They’d waited until about 8.30 am when the partying couple would’ve been fast asleep and set up their stereo system with the speakers turned towards the adjoining wall.
They put on a record (yes, it was THAT long ago!) to continuously repeat, with the sound cranked WAY up. Then went out for the day.
‘Yes,’ said the husband, with a malicious smile, ‘Gregorian chant beats Barry at Blenheim any time.’”
22. We Left The Neighbor With The Speakers On The Whole Weekend
“A number of years ago my wife and I lived on the ground floor of a two-floor apartment building with approximately 8 units.
Next door to us was a lady in her early 60s with a 20 something son of hers that rarely left the apartment and they proceeded to moan and groan at each other all day. The 20 something didn’t have a job or any sort of plan for life or at least some idea of what he wanted to do.
Well, that wasn’t the worst of it because about 2 months after we moved in and heard them screeching at all hours of the day we had a woman with a child upstairs who moved in 2 months after us.
That wouldn’t have been a problem except for her and her kid dropping things on the floor at all hours of the day including 2 am, 4 am, 6 am, and whenever they felt like doing so.
She would also play very loud and obnoxious music at all hours of the day while we would usually wear headphones or at least keep the volume to a limit where you could only hear it in our apartment just out of basic respect for others.
This went on for well over a year on and off and we talked to apartment management who didn’t do anything about it other than tell her to turn it down. Well, that didn’t work and they didn’t bother to evict her for her behavior.
Which also included leaving dropped candy and gum in the main stairwell and front of our interior apartment door. Finally, apartment management came over to clean it all up because her next-door neighbors were a bunch of pigs as well but at least they were quiet.
On our second year lease, we had already decided to move out after calling the cops countless times and being told that there was nothing they could do about loud music at all hours of the day which I found nonsense because it’s disturbing the peace even in the state we lived in as well as the city having a noise ordinance.
They simply didn’t want to do their job and I politely told one of the middle-aged officers thanks for nothing so much for protecting and serving.
So finally we got our future moving plans together and found a brand new place in a smaller and more quiet town without some of the big city drama that was going on in our community.
After dealing with the cops and the apartment management company, we were just worn out from all of the nonsense including having a child who was aged 0 to 21 months at the time.
Our final middle finger to the neighbor was to leave for a day on the weekend and make sure to have every radio blasting in the entire apartment including the boom box stereo in the living room and another couple of radios in the bedrooms that were very loud.
We left for the day and went to visit some family about 50 miles away. I can only imagine the sheer frustration that upstairs neighbors had as we left for an overnight stay at relatives in the new town we were moving to. Anyway, on this Saturday evening, we received a cell phone call from the management company that they were going to go into our apartment because the neighbors had complained about loud music.
Well, they did and shut down the radios but after that, we didn’t have any more problems for the 2 months we lived there prior to our move and finished out our lease.
It’s too bad you have to go to extremes to get people’s attention but sometimes that’s just the way it is because some people aren’t very smart and don’t listen to reason.”
21. Call The Police? I'll Set Up A Bright Lightbulb
“I had gotten along extremely well with this neighbor for years and then he started to get really weird such as yelling at random strangers walking past his house on the sidewalk to the point where one of my friends who lives across the street asked him what on earth was wrong with him.
I hold one annual BBQ every year – the neighbors are all invited (himself included) and have been doing this for years now. My parties never get out of control, there is nice food served and generally, most people are gone by around 11 pm (on a Saturday night).
I was walking one of my friends out to her car and saw a police car parked in front of my house. I walked right up and asked if there was a problem and they said, no, we did receive a noise complaint but we can’t hear a thing so obviously this is untrue.
I invited them to come into the backyard so they could see for themselves and to have some food if they were hungry which they declined. I asked who had called and yes, it was the next-door neighbor and I was furious.
I knew he had been sleeping in his basement bedroom rather than the upstairs bedroom as one time he complained to me when I had mistakenly forgotten to turn off my basement bathroom light which was right across from the basement room he slept in.
So, the next day I went out and got the strongest light bulb I could find but waited until the following Friday night to install it as it was a long weekend and I would be going out of town. I turned that sucker on and happily went out of town for the weekend.
When I returned I found he had trespassed on my property and put the kids swimming pool against my window to block the light (why he didn’t get blinds for his own window is beyond me) which I promptly moved. Yes, this was very passive-aggressive behavior on my part and at that point, I wrote a little note and put it in his mailbox.
The next day we chatted, he apologized for calling the police on me and I apologized for the bright light bulb and all was well after. He had been a single guy the first few years but then met someone, got married, and the kids started coming.
He admitted being stressed out by the kids and that he was taking his stress out on me and others (also why he was sleeping in the basement bedroom). He and his wife ended up moving later that year to a larger house to accommodate their growing family and hopefully, the extra space has relieved his stress levels!”
20. Neighbors Didn't Seem To Hear Their Dog Barking
“When I was a teenager, the next-door neighbors left their dog outdoors while they were at work. The dog would bark ALL day. I politely complained but got the answer that their dog was good and would not bark all day.
Of course, the dog would stop barking as soon as its owner would come home.
This went on for months and months. All the neighbors were annoyed. Finally, I recorded the barking and told the rest of the neighbors what I was going to do.
That evening I put my two huge stereo speakers in the window facing the neighbor’s house. As soon as they got home I started to play it back. It was at the same volume as when recorded.
The neighbors came out of their house and told me to turn it down.
I told them that the recording was their dog and that is what everyone had to listen to every day.
The husband looked mortified but the wife wanted to pick a fight.
After about an hour, I turned it off but told them that I intended to play it every day until they did something about their dog.
About two weeks later, the dog disappeared, but the neighbors never said anything about it.
They moved several months later.”
19. Won't Clean Up After Your Dog? I'll Toss The Dump To Your Patio
“I had a next-door neighbor that would constantly let his dog out and he would immediately come to drop a load in my yard. He wasn’t a huge dog but he was pretty big.
I never mentioned it but the neighbor would always assure me that he would clean up after his dog, but he never did. I always had to clean up the messes before I cut my grass or risk slinging it onto my shoes or the side of my house.
After more promises that never got fulfilled, I went out one day to clean the piles, and instead of disposing of them as I normally would, I tossed them all over onto his patio. I never had to clean my yard again. I guess he decided cleaning up after his own dog was too much trouble because it disappeared not long after that.
BTW, this was the same concrete patio he had poured and given the driver permission to drive a fully loaded concrete truck through my yard to get to his backyard. He never filled those ruts as he told me he would either.”
18. Sorry, But The Pigs Have To Go
“The house I was living in was the main house and when you walked out the front door they had added a smaller little efficiency to the front. For the most part, it was ok. But then this couple moved in.
They would fight and drink all night, every night. I began to hatch a plan at 3 am one night as I listened to the bellowing.
The house I resided in was attached to all the main property. I had our horses and dogs all fenced in.
Behind this efficiency was also my property and it was a small fenced-in area with a small barn. Perfect for my idea. I called my best friend and told her my thoughts. My timing was perfect.
The next day my friend showed up with two baby piglets.
Cute and loud. Betty Boop, and Goldie Hawn! It worked like a charm. The pigs rutted and squealed as they grew over the next few weeks. Soon I was the proud neighbor of an empty efficiency.
My piggies grew strong and bigger. It was a perfect place for them and we all lived happily ever after.
Well until the snow came and my feet got stuck in the muck with a pail of food. I was a single mom with two very young babies alone in the house. I tried hard to remove each foot but only sank deeper. Then it happened, Goldie Hawn bumped me.
I swayed in the darkened night, back and forth. My feet stuck in the blackened mud up to the mid-calf. I fell on my back. My first thought was, ‘Hannibal Lecter’. I am in the middle of nowhere Montana. No one lives around me and I am stuck sinking deeper in the mud as my piggies squeal and climb all over me for the pail of food.
I climbed out in the frozen muddy muck pulling my feet out of my Wellies and headed for the gate.
The whole time all I could imagine were my poor babies in the house alone as their mom sank lower and lower with each piggie foot walking all over trying to eat.
I got in the house covered in nasty pig muck and called the butcher up the road. It was late, cold and I smelled to high heaven.
The butcher nicely explained it wasn’t pork season. I said in a very clear threatening, god-fearing tone.
‘Get your boys here in the morning and take care of these pigs, put them in your freezer, and call me when it’s cutting time.’ I think he knew, I meant business.
Yes, I was sad early the next morning when I heard those boys take care of my Betty and Goldie.
But God help me I wasn’t getting eaten in the middle of winter because I was laying out there with a broken leg, stuck in the muck.
My friends laugh and I learned to tolerate the next renters. We ate well that winter. Don’t judge me, we were going to eat the piggies eventually, it’s a farm.
But I think of this one though as I had laid their envisioning man-eating pigs. ‘Was this somehow Karma?’ I never bought pigs again.”
17. I Corrected The Neighbor's Bad Spelling And Grammar
“When still living with my parents a few years ago, we moved to a new house.
Not much parking, so we always made sure we took up as little as possible by losing our front lawn and replacing it with another parking space so both my parents’ cars were on their own property and ensuring I always parked my car in front of these two, not blocking anyone else in any way.
Most neighbors did the same, and we all worked together to take up as little space as possible. All, that is, except for one guy.
I arrived home from work late one night to find that he’d parked half across my parents and half across next door – filling two spaces with his car.
So, I had to park across the road. There were no restrictions, no houses across the road, so the spaces were free for all. This particular space, however, was opposite his house.
I came out the next morning to find a note glued to my windscreen, full of spelling and grammar errors, declaring that he ‘didnt want to look out at my carr,’ and I ‘have to be mindfull of the fact’ that he ‘couldnt get the other carr off my drive with That there.’ (sic)
His other car was a tiny thing, a Ford Ka. There’s no way this was anything other than a tantrum on his part. I carefully removed the note with a wallpaper scraper in order to keep it as intact as possible and went in to show my mum.
Her first act was to contact the chap’s soon-to-be ex-wife, who’d left about a year earlier but who was still in contact with various neighbors in the close, including Mum. The woman confirmed her ex, who was quite unbelievably an English teacher, had no learning difficulties, no dyslexia, or any language issues – and in fact, in her words, ‘he’s just an idiot.’
Knowing this, I had no qualms overtaking a red pen, correcting every spelling and grammar issue (and there were plenty of issues!), before signing the note ‘3/10. See me.’
This was then glued to HIS windscreen (with Pritt stick, I’m not a complete jerk!), along with a second note pointing out that if he couldn’t manage to get a tiny car off a large driveway, we would be very happy to contact the DVLA on his behalf to report that he was unsafe continuing to drive.
Quite sad watching a grown man run and hide every time I stepped outside the house…”
16. Heavy Drinking Neighbor Got Reported By The Landlord
“I lived below this one couple for a few months back in Nov of 2012. The man would come in wasted most weekends, stomping up the main stairs outside of my mother’s bedroom window, slamming open the main door to the divided house/apartment building, slamming the main door closed, stomping up the stairs outside of our front door, slamming open his apartment door at the top of the stairs and then slamming it closed. I was finally fed up with it all when he started doing this during the week when my son was sleeping and he had his music on full blast, speakers pointed at the floor because they wanted our apartment because of the washer/dryer hookups.
I told them no, they couldn’t use my washer and dryer on several occasions, because it was MY electricity and water that went into running it and they’d basically be doing their smelly clothes in my washer for free. So he got it in his head to point the speakers at the floor, just to annoy us.
I let it go one night until midnight (He usually turned the music off at 11 pm). I called the cops for excessive noise at 12:01 am because my son was awake because of this noise and he had school the next day. They came out and issued him a warning and left. He flew up the stairs, making as much noise as one human could possibly make.
I called the cops again when the music started back up at 1:30 am. They came out and issued him a ticket for disturbing the peace. He ripped up the ticket and threw it in the cop’s face. Cop issued him a littering ticket, along with another disturbing peace ticket.
He screamed and flew up the stairs, smashed a glass entertainment center, smashed pretty much everything in his apartment and I went out and told the police ‘he’s destroying the place upstairs. It sounds like glass shattering and something heavy just fell against the floor.’
The police went up and arrested him for public intoxication and disorderly conduct because he was found to have an open container of booze outside of the property. His wife showed the police the container of booze (guessing she was sick of his stunts too?) Police asked for the landlord’s number.
His wife willingly gave it to them. The police called the landlord. At 2 in the morning. The landlord wasn’t happy. He filed an eviction for the destruction of property the very next morning, told the wife to go to a friend’s house, and changed the locks that afternoon.
He told the couple they would get their stuff back as soon as the man paid for the damages that he made to the apartment. The stuff was still there, 30 days later.
The couple never came back for it. The landlord sold off what he could, made the repairs himself, and moved in a nice single mom and her daughter soon after the repairs were made and the apartment put back on the rental market.
Not sorry to see that couple kicked out. He hated everything about me because I was outspoken and wouldn’t cower to his demands. -shrugs- Oh well. Don’t mess with my kids.”
15. This Circle Of Friends Doesn't Work
“I had a neighbor that I was in a three-way ‘friend’ triangle with. We would all hang out, then one of them would get mad at me, and get the other to stop talking to me. Then, they would fight and get mad about something between them, and one of them would come and make ‘friends’ with me again.
Eventually, all three of us would reconcile and start being friends again and the cycle would repeat.
Well, eventually I got tired of it and decided to let them have each other. I could not stand the drama.
But, I still had some residual resentment towards the whole thing.
I could see the front of one of their houses from one of the rooms in my house. I could see the street in front of the house, most of the front lawn, and the front door. For some reason, she started parking in front of her house instead of the driveway.
Well, one day, I saw her go out her front door, down the steps, walk right across the walkway to their driveway, disappear out of my field of vision down the driveway, and reappear going left to her car. I got a wicked idea. I got my phone and called her number.
She could hear the phone ringing, and she got so excited she ran right across her lawn. Up the stairs, unlock the door, fling it open, run inside—and then I hung up.
She walked back to her car. Would she fall for it again?
Well, let’s see.
She did.
Several times.
After all, it could have been our other ‘friend’ calling and you don’t want to miss that.
I took pity on her and let her drive away.
I must say I found this so satisfying I did this repeatedly to her at various intervals when I was bored and she crossed my vision.
I doubt she ever caught on because she always fell for it.
Yes, it was really really petty, but I was young. It was a harmless and wicked delight.”
14. I Invented A New Identity And Pulled Off My Revenge
“My neighbor had screamed at us in the street because our removal van had transgressed that invisible line which demarcated our parking space, in a public street, from her own. This was in the first week of our moving in.
Over time we had stones thrown through our greenhouse, I once caught her letting down the tires on my car.
She would shout abuse over the hedges and bad-mouthed us to our neighbors – neighbors who would tell us what a menace she was but would say nothing to her face. It seems I had been the first person to dare stand up to her.
In time the police became involved. They couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything regarding the criminal damage but they cautioned her regarding her harassment of us as neighbors.
Perhaps we should have known better than to move in. Her garden was a mess of old cars, boats, caravans, weeds, and unruly trees.
She was a woman in her 60s who lived alone, you’ll not be surprised to hear, and who I strongly suspect suffered from a personality disorder.
She was petty, vindictive, and far from being above criminality. It was a perfect foil for my own petty and vindictive side.
This was, I feel I must stress, before my days as a therapist. I’m a little past such things now but here, the dear reader begins the tale of my petty vengeance.
There used to be a website called freecycle. You’d post up stuff you no longer wanted and arrange for it to be collected, for free, by anybody who wanted it.
I used it on occasion myself and so had an account.
One day I was skim-reading the various items up for grabs and noticed that she had posted a request. Did anybody have any buttons, beads, and such like to give away? She wanted to make jewelry from buttons and beads, sell them at a local craft fair, and any quantity would be gratefully received.
It was now that my passive-aggressive side leaped into action. I invented a feminine email address and joined the freecycle under my new identity.
I posted the following on freecycle:
‘Hello. I have a large jar full of different-sized buttons, beads, and other such things.
Does anybody have any use for them?’
Lo and behold, she got in touch. I told her that I lived on a nearby military base and that she could go to the checkpoint on a certain day to collect a large jar of buttons that my mother, a one-time seamstress, had left upon her death.
I laughed inwardly as I imagined her driving up to the soldiers on guard and having them search the checkpoint for buttons.
She emailed to say that the buttons hadn’t been there when she’d called. I apologized profusely and told her that my father had been ill that morning and I’d had to rush off.
So, she accepted the apology and sped off to fetch those buttons which I now assured her would be there upon her arrival. The soldiers must have thought her mad.
She emailed me again and I told her that I had gone to see a medium and that the spirit of my dead mother had appeared, telling me to make jewelry from the buttons and sell them at a local craft fair.
She didn’t like that. I received a most impolite response.
Well, she must have found some buttons eventually because she later advertised again, asking for a trestle table which she could use at a fair.
Well, what a marvelous thing that was. My colleagues and I were having great fun reading her responses and would watch in howls of laughter as I typed my responses.
I invented a new email address and posed as an old gentleman who lived in the middle of a long street with no parking. He had an old but very sturdy trestle table and she was more than welcome to have it.
She would have to drive a good way, park, and then walk a good way along the street to this house.
A time was arranged and so she set off for her prize. Alas, poor John later received an annoying email telling him that she had gone to the address given and that there was nobody called John living there.
‘John’ apologized for his typo. He lived at number 67, not 68.
A slip of his poor old fingers, nothing more.
She must have gone back a second time because poor old John received an incredibly rude email.
I then wrote back as John’s wife, apologizing and explaining that John had just died and had suffered from Alzheimer’s in the last years of his life.
My neighbor’s search for a trestle table continued and a new email address was forged, a new identity was donned and a new offer was made. Steve promised to drop them around and leave them in her garden. They were just taking up space in his garage and he wanted them gone.
I had had to change my writing style, for fear that she’d soon notice the similarities between the different emails. Steve had dyslexia and a very simplistic grasp of grammatical rules. I was a teacher at the time and so had plenty of exemplar materials to draw from.
Twice Steve promised to drive the tables round and twice this busy tradesperson had been too rushed off his feet to find the time.
After the third let down, she inquired as to when she might receive them to which Steve replied that he had mentioned his tables to a friend and this friend had heard of my neighbor and told him of what a witch she was.
He had therefore just burned them in his back garden and so she wouldn’t be getting them after all.
I wish I had kept copies of the replies I received. My initial offer of buttons and beads is all I could find in my collection of 15000 emails.
My neighbor passed away some years later. Nobody mourned her passing.
On clearing the garden the new neighbors found a self-portrait, in clay, buried under weeds. I now have a life-sized clay head of my troublesome neighbor as a trophy.”
13. Noisy Neighbor Got Moved To The Other Side Of The Town
“Up until recently, I had a neighbor who was a violent heavy drinker who used to play his music loudly from when he got up (about 1200hours or later) to when he had wasted himself (and friends) to sleep (sometimes 0600hours).
I had several ‘confrontations‘ with him but was well aware of the legal situation (as I had gone to him, I was the aggressor in any confrontations, even though his living room was directly below my bedroom). He was having one of his usual ‘parties‘ and the music was loud enough to be heard two streets away!
(About 150’) at 0100 hrs I had about enough (an elderly lady lives on the other side of the plasterboard from his flat, we live in a four-unit house conversion).
So as I had access to the multiple fuse boxes (under the stairs from my flat and separate from his) I flipped the switch for his kitchen circuit!
No more music and loud complaints as he and his ‘guests’ tried to work out why there was no more music, eventually someone had figured out to check the fuse box and the party was back on! That’s when I called the landlord (again) and apologized for the early morning call but he must do something!
He could clearly hear the music and said he would sort it out. It took a couple of weeks (and I had to behave myself) but my neighbor was moved to the other side of town. He’s now someone else’s problem.”
12. My Son Avenged Me
“We had an obnoxious neighbor living below us over 20 years ago that I got a bit petty with after a LOT of provocation.
He had a bit of a drinking problem, but he was also a loud, shouty bully. He and his wife used to regularly wake up half the neighborhood with their loud arguments that always started at 1:00 am, and ended in loud hook-up sessions that had us cringing and covering our heads with our pillows, wishing they’d shut up!
They also had a horribly neglected dog that we all complained about and eventually managed to get him to look after better, but that’s another story. He also used to suddenly blast us out of it with really loud disco music at about 3:00 pm, which is not only when most people are having a snooze after lunch, but is actually forbidden by law in Spain – you have to respect the siesta from 2 to 5 after all!!
Anyway, long story short, it was bad enough when I was expecting my first son but when he kept up this behavior when I was pregnant with the second one a couple of years later, I’d had enough. So the next time my first toddler wanted something to do, I gave him a small saucepan to beat on the floor for a while.
Then a wooden spoon. Then another small saucepan. Thump, thump, thwack, thwack. I could take it, I was listening to all sorts of crappy noise all the time from all sides! After a few days, our neighbor started to take the hint and the loud music midday stopped… at least for a while.
But that’s also another story!”
11. Jerk Neighbor's Car Got A Tank Full Of Sugar
“Well over 40 yrs ago..my friend and I asked my neighbor for a ride to the mall to pick up concert tickets.
We offered him gas money. He said ‘how about you wash my car then I’ll take you.’ We said OK… we washed his car. While we were busy washing his car he got ready.
After we finished we told him we’d be right back.
He said ‘ok.’ We went back to my house to clean up and when we got back to his house he was gone. We waited until my Dad got home. He felt bad for us so he drove us to the mall… he even paid for our tickets.
He also called out the jerk. The idiot just smiled and went about his business.
The more we thought about it, the madder we got, so the night of the concert before we left, we took a funnel and a bag of sugar to his house… we threw away both at the arena then enjoyed the show.
The next time we saw him he’s outside with his buddy ranting and raving about his poor car. We not only sugared his tank, but we also poured it in every opening we could find. If it had a cap and we could get it off sugar went inside… thanks to the funnel we didn’t leave a mess behind!
We got dirty looks every time he saw us, we’d just smile back and wave. I even asked him once if he needed his car washed. Sweet sweet revenge!”
10. I Let The Cops In And Fled Out
“Once upon a time, my then-husband and I lived in an apartment building with thin walls.
My husband had really, really good hearing. One night, the downstairs neighbor turned on her radio full blast.
My husband had to go upstairs to our neighbor’s apartment to sleep. I can sleep through anything, so I slept in our place.
I woke at 5:30 am and still heard the stupid stereo blasting. I called the police non-emergency line.
They told me to call 911.
‘It’s only a noise complaint,’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Call 911,’ they said.
So I did. I barely had time to get dressed when the cops came to the front door. I let them in and fled to my apartment post-haste, shutting the door just in time to keep the obnoxious neighbor from seeing it was me who called the police on her.
The next day, I told my husband what I had done. He told me to call the landlord, tell them what happened and say the magic words.
The magic words were, ‘I’d hate to see what this will do to your property values.’
Guess who got evicted soon after?
Guess who helped her move out?”
9. I Tapped On The Vents Until He Got The Message
“The apt we lived in was made of wood frame, so anyone walking above our unit would make squeaky noise. I understand that we couldn’t expect our upstairs neighbor to not walk, but he would walk every night starting from 10p to 2a. It wasn’t just walking periodical either, it was constantly walking back and forth from one room to another.
It could be his dog, but the squeaky noise was so loud that it couldn’t be caused by a 30lb dog.
One night it was particularly annoying with back and forth squeaky for 3 hours straight. It kept me up till 1 am. I finally had it.
I opened our patio door several times (facing in a way that only our upstairs neighbor could hear.) I then tapped on all the vents (mounted high by the ceiling) where only he could hear. I did that for several minutes-opening and closing the patio door then tapping the vents.
Finally, he got the message and the walking stopped. I thought he probably slept in since the noise always started so late. The next morning I started tapping all our vents after kid and hubby were gone, then slammed every interior door as I walked by (making sure not the one by my side neighbor.) I blasted loud pop music all day.
No more night walking since then.
Petty, yes. Effective, double yes. When I am tired, I am cranky, when I am cranky, I slam doors.”
8. We Prepared Front Yard Surprises For The Neighbors
“We had recently moved into our new home and didn’t know any of the neighbors. One neighbor a few doors down had an old basset hound who, for some unknown reason, decided that our front yard resembled his bathroom nirvana. I didn’t yet know for sure which dog was ‘blessing’ our yard until I caught him in the act – with his pants down so to speak.
I finally scooped up the large steaming pile of poop with my shovel, carried it over to its rightful home, knocked on the front door, opened the screen door, and when the owner answered I dumped the prize in the entryway just inside the door.
I said, ‘I believe this belongs to you’ and left. They and their company were having dinner in the dining room a few feet from the door and everyone present watched and heard what I said. I wasn’t loud, growling, or threatening – I was just friendly and matter-of-fact about it.
Their stunned expression was priceless. That was the end of our front yard surprises. The neighbors never again mentioned it.”
7. I Splashed My Water Gun On The Heavy-Drinking Neighbor
“I used to live in a mildly sketchy pretty isolated part of town and had one of the most irksome neighbors life could offer.
He was constantly wasted, enjoyed stealing groceries out of peoples deliveries, spent his free time harassing and trying to grope all the women who lived in our small building, and he constantly smoked like a steam engine, usually in the street right under my window because he didn’t want to lose the deposit on his room by stinking it up.
Our building manager was very firm about that kind of thing, but a little laxer on all his other unsavory behaviors.
Now I didn’t know this at the time, but I had a small tracheal ulcer that had developed during an earlier surgery, so I was constantly coughing all day and feeling generally unwell.
His smoke filtering into my room didn’t help matters at all, especially since he seemed to enjoy smoking late at night when I was lying down and trying to sleep – something which would set off another round of violent hacking coughs that would last for ages.
Repeated attempts to ask him to please go elsewhere to smoke had failed, and my building manager had even put up a no-smoking sign on the wall below, but he’d simply disregarded it, and the manager couldn’t do anything about it because once he was off the property, he was effectively free to do as he chose.
One day I decided I’d had enough. I stopped by the shops on my way back from work and bought a cheap water gun and an air horn before heading back to camp out by my window behind a closed curtain.
It didn’t take long before he stepped out and began puffing, so I decided to give him a few minutes of peace before making a move.
Slowly, I reached the air horn out of the window and positioned the nozzle of the water gun to face him, and gently pressed on the trigger. A light spray of water hit him on the face, and he looked up to see where it was coming from.
Immediately, I jammed on the trigger of the water gun with full force and started waving it around, while slamming my thumb down on the air horn. He yelled in shock at the double assault on his senses and stumbled backward, tripping over his feet in his haste to scuttle back indoors.
I yanked my weapons back into my room and hid, heart, pounding and wondering if I had just made a terrible mistake in annoying that scuzzy man.
Eventually, it transpired that he had been too wasted to really understand what had happened because he hadn’t put two and two together and didn’t seem to have been able to figure out that I was the one behind it.
A while later he was kicked out of the building anyway. It seems like so many people had complained about his terrible behavior that the management had decided to just cut their losses and send him packing.”
6. Sloppy Neighbors Got Evicted Because Of Complaints
“My then-roommate and I lived in a ground-floor apartment in a complex we were both familiar with.
We drove past it numerous times, having lived in the city it was located in since we were both kids. In fact, we were friends since 4th or 5th Grade.
During the two years we lived in the apartment, we had three different upstairs neighbors.
The first neighbor was a single guy, probably in his 30s (we were both in our early 20s). The only time he caused us any problems was we heard some loud noise coming from the kitchen. I used the broom handle to thump on the ceiling, and he came downstairs to ask what our problem was.
I explained about the noise coming from his apartment, and his significant other was tenderizing some steaks. I apologized and we went about our own business. He would move out a few months later, complaining that they (the complex management) were hiking his rent. We went to them and they said they wouldn’t hike ours; he was on a 6-month lease, whereas we were on a 1-year lease.
The second neighbor was a piece of work. She was a single woman, probably mid to late 40s, with a teenage son. They had a rabbit they kept out on the balcony, and some of its droppings would fall between the cracks onto our patio.
That’s not the worst of it.
Mom and Son both liked to listen to their music rather loudly. Mom listened to Country. Son liked Rap. I don’t know if they both cranked up a local radio station, or if they put on a CD, but regardless, they played their music loud.
We would use a counter assault.
If Son happened to be playing his music, we would play Country or Rock. My roommate had a decent collection of Country CDs, mostly Classic Rock. So Snoop Dogg or 50 Cent would be dueling with Shania Twain or Pink Floyd.
If Mom decided to play her Country music, Deana Carter (Strawberry Wine seemed to be playing a lot whenever Mom was home) would have to compete against The Eagles or Eminem (she had a couple of Eminem CDs and some other Rap CDs). If my roommate’s then-significant other happened to be over (every other weekend), he would grab one of his CDs from his truck, which happened to be the same type of music we both liked (a little bit of everything), or would tune the radio on my stereo (in the living room) to a local Alternative station (99X).
I told my roommate if we had to, we could fight dirty. I had a few Classical CDs. Nothing by a particular artist; they were all compilations/collections, with random pieces by different composers. I believe I also had at the time a copy of the Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary CD, which featured a decent collection of novelty music recordings, with selections by Alan Sherman, Tom Lehrer, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, Spike Jones, and a few others.
I think I also had a couple of ‘Weird Al’ CDs I could pull out.
They were very sloppy neighbors, too. I would often find an occasional kitchen utensil tossed over the railing into the bushes outside of our patio.
While Mom and Son were living there, we’d have this group show up at our building.
They’d blast their music at 2 in the morning, and someone’s headlights would be shining right into my window. I had to tack up a blanket over the window to block them out. They’d all gather in the breezeway, talking up a storm.
My roommate discovered the best way to get them to disperse was to open up our door and sit in the dining room. She might read a book or just sit there. I had two cats, so she’d make sure they were shut up in my room.
If her significant other (now husband) happened to be visiting, they’d sit up and play a board game or a card game. If I happened to be sitting up, either with both of them or just her and me, then we’d play a card game or sit there and listen to the conversation.
Within 20 to 30 minutes they’d all leave and then we’d close the door and go back to bed.
I believe Mom and Son were evicted, probably from too many complaints from us (we’d complained to the management a time or two) and other tenants as well as nonpayment of rent.
A single woman moved in with a daughter who was maybe 3 or 4 years old. She had just divorced her abusive husband and told us to be on the lookout for his vehicle. Never saw it. The only problem we had with her was her daughter running around upstairs or jumping on her bed, but it was only early in the evening; she was well asleep by 9 or 10 PM when we went to bed. She said the apartment was such a disaster when she moved in; they never went in to clean it.
She said she found all sorts of illegal paraphernalia, which explained a few things.”
5. Few Doorbells And Punches To The Ceiling Did The Job
“I had an upstairs neighbor that did some sort of exercise routine when he came home at 2 am. Every night.
It was Tokyo. In Tokyo, you never confront a neighbor directly.
You go through the landlord.
The landlord seemed like he expected this.
Since I worked early, and my neighbor was stomping the floor at 2 am, it was a bad situation.
But I realized, if he was dancing at 2 am, he must not get up until noon.
One morning, I left the building at 6 am and rang his room on the way out.
I know he could hear me. Sometimes, when he was particularly loud, I’d pound on the ceiling. He would stop making noise immediately. So I know he heard me pounding.
One excuse my landlord gave me when I called to complain is that in a building, you don’t really know where sounds come from. Even though the guy was bouncing around on my ceiling, my landlord refused to believe it could be my upstairs neighbor.
Well, it goes both ways.
I started to hit the ceiling at 6 am as I was leaving for work. I figured if he ever complained, I could just say that you don’t know where the sound is coming from in a building like this.
He never complained.
My only concern is that he might not connect the ringing doorbell and the sudden loud noise under his apartment with his late-night dancing and calisthenics.
However, after a few doorbells and random punches to the ceiling, it got quiet.
He either moved out, or he learned his lesson.
I always hoped he learned his lesson because I did not want to train a new neighbor.”
4. A Glass Of Water Was The Solution To Annoying Music
“In college, we figured out a way to automatically turn down the stereo in the dorm room below us as if by remote control.
Every room had a heating/cooling unit built into the exterior wall under the window.
These units were fed with water that was circulated by pipes that ran along with the ceiling of the room below the unit and up into each unit in the floor above.
One time after a little too much southern rock came up from the floor below, I had an idea.
I popped the front off of our heating/cooling unit and noticed a small gap in the floor where the pipes came into our unit from the room below. I found a small length of pipe and positioned it into the gap, and poured a glass of water into it.
Almost immediately the music stopped, some curses were uttered, and we could hear a lot of scrambling going on below. We replaced the front of our unit and went back to whatever we were up to. Sometime later, a maintenance worker came up to our room, knocked, and said he had to check out our heater.
He opened the unit up, looked at it, detected no leaks, and asked us if anything weird had happened with it lately. ‘Nope, everything seems normal,’ we replied, and he left.
From that point forward, whenever the music got too annoying, we simply got a glass of water and turned the stereo off.
Makes me wonder why the guy below didn’t move his equipment out of the line of fire.”
3. They Didn't Like My "Unnatural" Hair Color
“Let me start off by saying that this did not happen to me, but rather to a cousin of mine who is 18 and a senior in high school. She told me the story and gave me permission to share it.
So my cousin has a natural patch of white hair at the front of her otherwise dark head of hair.
She’s had this all her life and it’s gotten bigger as she’s gotten older. She used to get teased a lot for it at school…until bleaching/dyeing the hair at the front of your head a different color than the rest of your hair became a trend, and now she blends right in with other girls her age.
(I believe that this is the ‘E-girl’ look. If you google it you’ll see which hairstyle I’m referring to. My cousin’s hair looks similar to this, only she doesn’t have to dye her hair to get the light streak.)
The school she currently attends has a very strict dress code that includes no hair that is dyed ‘unnatural colors’ and extreme hairstyles and frowns heavily on dyed hair in general. When in-person classes resumed at her school, one of my cousin’s teachers took one look at her hair and sent her to the principal’s office, insisting my cousin’s ‘unnatural, extreme’ hair was in violation of the dress code and ‘too distracting,’ despite the fact that she’s never dyed/bleached any part of her hair in her life.
My cousin insisted that this is the way her hair has always grown, but the principal was having none of it. She told my cousin, ‘When you come back tomorrow, I expect you to have dyed your hair back to its natural color, and don’t dye it again!
As long as you are at our school, you are to adhere to the dress code!’ My cousin smugly replied, ‘Of course, I will comply with the dress code from now on!’
My cousin got some hair dye that was as close of a match to the hair on the rest of her head as possible.
In order for it to blend in, she ended up dyeing all of her hair, not just the white streak. The next day when she walked in, the teacher complimented her on her ‘natural’ hair and told her never to dye her hair again.
Cue malicious compliance!
As with anyone who dyes their hair, the roots eventually need to be touched up as the hair grows. But my cousin didn’t bother with doing that. At first, nobody (at least none of the teachers/staff) batted an eyelid. It wasn’t until her hair had grown maybe an inch or so that her teacher suddenly looked at her and barked ‘What did we tell you about your hair?
No unnatural colors or extreme hairstyles! We told you to dye it back to its natural color and not dye it again! Go to the principal’s office!’
My cousin did as she was told. The principal asked her why her hair looked the way it did.
My cousin replied with ‘Well, you told me to dye my hair back to its ‘natural’ color and to never dye it again! So I did just that. I dyed my hair the color of the hair on most of my head to get rid of the white streak, which, by the way, is how my hair naturally grows and didn’t dye it again, so now the roots are showing!
I did exactly what you told me to do!’
The principal called her parents and told them to come pick their daughter up, explaining that due to her multiple violations of the school’s dress code, she would be suspended. So they came to the school and brought the family photo album with them, which had pictures of my cousin at various stages of her life, all with the white patch in her hair.
In addition, her father also has a white patch of hair on the front of his otherwise dark head of hair. It runs on his side of his family (I believe the medical term for it is ‘poliosis’). So the principal reluctantly didn’t end up suspending my cousin, but she did give her a warning that ‘Your extreme hair is still a distraction to the other students, and they are going to wonder why you’re getting special treatment.
Consider yourself lucky!’
So my cousin wasn’t suspended and didn’t get any more harassment from the school staff. Gradually her hair returned to its natural ‘extreme’ color. She still continues to occasionally get disapproving looks from the school staff, but none of her classmates feel like she’s getting special treatment, and think it’s cool that her hair naturally grows that way.
My cousin says that she will not be returning to that school next semester and will be home-schooled instead.
I would like to clarify some stuff. Yes, my cousin and I are both American, but from different states. The school my cousin attended was indeed a private Christian school.
She told me that their dress code was very strict, but for some things they were stricter with girls, and for other things they were stricter with boys. Girls could grow their hair as long as they wanted to, provided it was clean, well kept, and not styled in an extreme way.
Boys were required to have theirs be short enough to not touch the back of their collar or their eyebrow and must style it in a ‘conservative’ way. Hair on both boys and girls must be its natural color and not dyed. Boys also were required to shave their faces daily, even if they only had peach fuzz.
Girls were allowed to wear earrings provided they weren’t too large (or distracting), boys weren’t allowed to wear any jewelry at all. Of course, there were the usual ‘skirts must be a certain length, no spaghetti straps’ etc. Hats, hoods, sunglasses, and jackets were only to be worn outdoors.
Students’ clothes were not to have any logos or images on them with the exception of the school emblem, and they were not allowed to wear anything that was considered ‘faddish.’
She told me about this one guy who wore the type of glasses that get darker when you go outside, and his teacher mistook them for sunglasses and made him take them off.
Since they were prescription lenses, he was unable to see everything clearly unless he wore the glasses. His parents complained but the school insisted that the glasses took too long to return to their clear state and would be too distracting, both for him and the other students.
So his parents were forced to buy him two new pairs of prescription glasses; a pair of regular glasses and a pair of sunglasses.
I think some of these rules were relaxed a bit for the Zoom sessions, but once in-person classes resumed they started cracking down on students who were violating the dress code.”
2. Noisy Kids Had The Nerve To Tell The Landlord On Me
“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/the early twenties), and one day they were hanging out on the back porch, being extra loud & obnoxious, so I decided to make a mix cd of annoying songs (The Happy Happy Joy Joy song by Ren & Stimpy, and The Duck Song that has over 7 versions) that I found on YouTube, and I used a music program to layer those songs with random, ear-piercing sounds, as well as tones that would induce headache, nausea, etc.
I popped the cd into my tower stereo, and put my huge box speakers near my living room window that led 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 their butts off at my antics and thought I was playing, so I cranked up the volume to 75% (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 was like… ‘What’s going on? I never get any noise complaints from you.’ I explained what happened and he was like… ‘Oh okay, they get a strike then.’ My landlord had a 3 strike system for problematic tenants, 3 strikes and they’re out on their butt.”
1. Neighbor Did Everything To Block His Enemy's View
“Not me, but my neighbor. We both have properties that are long and narrow (~130′ x 960′). On my side is undeveloped land with some cattle, and lots of deer and other wildlife (even a new family of foxes!).
On D’s side is a subdivision that was recently created.
My neighbor (call him D) had a huge pile of brush that he moved to the street for the quarterly brush pick up. One of the neighbors, whose backyard abutted D’s, asked D if he would start his new brush pile in a different location (it was directly in the line of sight to his back porch) because he bought the house in part because of the unobstructed and nice view.
D was laughing as he told me this. He has several animal trailers, a tractor, and other large equipment and he moved them all so they would obstruct the old guys’ view. ‘Nobody is going to tell me what to do.’ What a jerk.
In unrelated pettiness on his part, I had an 8′ privacy fence erected between our properties. As did several other neighbors. (Their homes abutted on the length of his property-the 960′).”
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