We all keep this list in our head, don’t we? Unless you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, you’ve got annoying neighbors. It could be in the ‘burbs, or maybe you live in an apartment. Either way, we all have neighbors who, through no fault of their own, irritate the living crap out of us. To be clear, my neighbors aren’t doing anything illegal, unethical or even marginally newsworthy. I know some of the things on the list are totally my issues, but that doesn’t make my neighbors less stupid.
10. Close It or Fix It! We don’t have mailboxes on our house or even in front of our houses. Every 50 meters there’s a post with a platform with four mailboxes on it. One of my neighbors often leaves his mailbox open. This infuriates me. “Close your fecking mailbox,” I scream in my head each time I see it just hanging open next to my perfectly closed mailbox. It effects me not at all, but just the same, his ignorant laziness in either not closing or not fixing it makes me want to destroy his open mailbox beyond recognition with a baseball bat.
9. Don’t Walk Your Dog When My Dog is Trying To Poop: For my dog, pooping is an extremely delicate activity that requires just the right atmospheric conditions and concentration. If your dog walks by when my dog is doing her circle dance to determine the perfect stance and location needed to excrete metabolic waste, my dog will be forced to protect her territory by barking at your dog even if you’re 50 meters away. The poop will then be delayed until I have to walk her again later.
8. Why Is Your Generator Always Running? In the northern part of the country some people choose to have a gas powered generator so that if the power goes out they will be able to have lights etc, My neighbor across the street has a generator. Every morning when I get up and take my dog out his generator is running even though we haven’t lost power. I’m convinced that he’s either incinerating the bodies of his victims or cooking meth in his basement. As a reference, please watch The ‘Burbs starring Tom Hanks and Breaking Bad starring Bryan Cranston.
7. I Hope Your House Burns Down: Living in a neighborhood is a cooperative venture. It’s important that we adhere to unwritten social rules. In the winter sometimes the fire hydrants get buried in snow. If they don’t get shoveled out, firefighters will have to do so before they can start putting out the fire in your house. One fire hydrant serves about four houses. Guess what idiots, it’s not my job to shovel it out every time. Yes, sadly, I live somewhere that a three foot tall fire hydrant often gets completely buried in snow, like I wish my neighbors would.
6. Nighttime Yardwork: For my U.K. readers our yard is what you call your “garden.” Imagine if your neighbor was using a lawnmower in the garden at 9:30 at night. Then once done mowing, he takes out his leaf blower so he can walk around getting every stray blade of grass off of his driveway. Then he will start pruning the tree in his front yard with a hedge trimmer. In the dark. Is it wrong to wish that he might trim off one of his digits? Maybe just a pinky to teach him a lesson.
5. Stop Being A Creepy Ghost: Because sleep is not part of my skillset, I’m often up at 5 a.m. taking my dog out. Not all the time, but every now and then I’ll turn around to see an older woman come drifting around the corner out of the fog. I’m not sure if I see her feet moving. I don’t hear a sound. She’s wearing a sweatshirt. And she just moves noiselessly past in the darkness. Oddly my dog never barks at her. I don’t know where she comes from or where she goes. As the kids would say, it’s creepy A.F.
4. Outdoor, Barefoot, Mail Getting, Cell Phone Talking: I have a neighbor who, in the Spring and Summer, gets home early evening and apparently takes his shoes off, calls someone and walks out to his open mailbox which is right in front of my house. So this dope is on the sidewalk in front of my house barefoot and talking loudly on his mobile. Often after he’s gotten his mail and left the box open he’ll walk back to his driveway and stand outside talking on his cell phone, which prevents my dog from going out to poop, unless I want to tolerate a seizure like bark-fest for five minutes straight.
3. No cookies? Are You Kidding Me?!!? Last winter the older woman who lives across the street had gotten her SUV stuck in the snow at the end of her drive. I voluntarily went over to help. I spent 20 minutes pushing and digging before I noticed her rear wheels weren’t spinning when the front ones were. She had the emergency brake on! I spent 20 minutes pushing her stupidly large SUV with my torn rotator cuff only to discover that she was a complete moron. If that doesn’t deserve her sending me a plate of freshly baked cookies then I don’t know what does. But the cookies never came. Next time she’s stuck and her house is on fire I will not be digging out her truck or her hydrant.
2. If you park on the street you deserve to get towed, or hit: My street is wide enough for a lane on either side. When a self-centered, egotistical jerk parks on the street it blocks one lane of traffic. Idiots. Tell your stupid friend to pull into the driveway.
1. I Know Where Maggie Is and I’m Not Telling: One of my neighbors owns 15 cats. Yes, 15. One of them is named Maggie. I know this because about 7 months out of the year, twice a week I look out my back window to see my neighbor walking through my back yard shaking a bag of cat treats and calling “Maggie” over and over. Guess what neighbor? I’m pretty sure your cat is hiding from you because you’re annoying. Hey, I’ve got an idea! How about if you want to find your cat, you don’t let it live outside? I’d like to get invisible fencing that would shock my neighbor when he crosses into my yard.
As far as I know, only one of my neighbors knows about this blog and she didn’t make the list. If I’m found murdered soon I’ve just given you a list of suspects. Sorry this was so long, but it was good therapy for me. So what do your neighbors do that bothers you? Feel free to share this on Facebook and tag the offending neighbors.
Have a great Tuesday! ~Phil
This is a GREAT list. In fact, upon reading number 3 caused me to spit my tea all over my keyboard. Good times. My neighbours are SO annoying. I live in a old house, built around 1851. So, the walls are pretty thin. Anyway, I am a loud person-and I laugh pretty loud too. This causes my neighbour to hit the wall in an attempt to quiet me down. Nope. This aint college and I don’t live in a dorm. Anyway, thanks for letting me vent. Happy Tuesday Phil!
I can’t believe a fully grown adult would resort to pounding on the walls. I’m not sure I could tolerate living in a shared house or apartment building. I can’t stand people living in other houses near me.
IKR? I live in a townhouse but they call it ‘semi detached’ or ‘terraced’ here. So funny, if you live in a house that stands alone or ‘detached’, you are considered a bit rich and a bit posh. That neighbour of mine will NOT be getting a Xmas card from me.
That was hilarious Phil! Totally empathise with number 9, my dog won’t poop until he’s found the right blade of grass and can’t ‘perform’ if there’s any distraction. However, I have been known to finish my ‘yard work’ in the dark by the light of a torch – nothing electrical though, just looks a bit odd to the neighbours who all come to the windows to watch! Short on entertainment in my neighbourhood ..
I am not a smoker but my elderly male neighbor is, and his wife makes him smoke outside. Unfortunately in the summer, air currents being what they are, and with windows being opened, it seems like we are smokers too:( My dog is also obsessed with them and will sit at the end of her leash, pointed at their front door, just waiting and hoping to catch a glimpse of them. It’s creepy.
One of my neighbors is a relentless gardener, too. I swear she mows the grass, the minute the snow melts. And when the garden tractor isn’t running, the leaf blower is!
Sometimes I think the relentless gardeners are the worst. You can’t relax and enjoy time outdoors in your own yard with all the racket they make.
Right!!!
“If you park on the street you deserve to get towed, or hit” – I agree!!! I soooo agree.
If there’s a place for parking I don’t care, but these idiots that do so at the expense of turning it into a one lane road are the ones that infuriate me.
Number 6!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG you described my neighbor to a tee!! He was just out there on Sunday, EVERY Sunday! Dude, it’s winter! AND we have a noise statute in town, no power tools, etc, after 8PM for homeowners, none after 6pm for landscapers. How the hell do you see in the dark?? Some people are way out there…. Great post, as always 🙂
Seriously, who enjoys yard work that much?
I guarantee, no matter the weather, he’ll be out there this weekend. Didn’t the grass stop growing already? LOL
So I’m not alone in my pet peeves
They lights on when they vacation for weeks
The littering, the hipster music
Which leeks threw the apartment units
It’s just not fit for the faint hearted
You might not want to get me started.
You’re a genius savant
Of rhyming skills you do not want
Oh well Phil I thank you kindly
Your neighbors all can kiss your heinie!
I have a neighbor who seriously yells at her two Chihuahuas every time they go out. Every one else here in the apartments uses a leash for their dog, but she just lets them out, and then screams at the top of her lungs (I know this because she is really short and she shouts louder than me, thus the top of her lungs) for one or both of the damn dogs. I have to plan my dog’s poopy time around when she lets her roam, or I too will be waiting for the bark (jumping) fest to end. And…whatever happened to good old fashioned rakes? We have gardeners who use those blowers and blow the stuff back and forth about 10 times.
I fear that I am that crazy neighbour. The one who has a “song” and it’s obsesses over for months. I hope we have good insulation otherwise my neighbours have heard me singing “aaaam gonna sweeeeeng from the chaaaandoleeeer” for the past two years over and over and over. The neighbours across the way are perhaps slightly luckier as they only get to see me doing the interpretative dancing around the kitchen with no sounds!
You must live in my neighborhood. I don’t have the mailbox problem but I can check off the others. The house across the street is occupied by two dumbasses who: let their dog bark outside for two hours straight, mow the lawn on Sunday night at dinner time, use a wimpy electric tree trimmer which sounds like a dentist drill, and park in the street. This is a quartile of stupid.
Maggie? I thought it was Glenn we were trying to find out the fate of?
(end Walking Dead joke that fell flat)
How about “don’t look at me…just don’t look at me!”
During the summer, there was someone in the building next to mine who would chain smoke outside for several hours at night. We had to shut our windows to keep from dying. This past summer was extremely hot and humid. We don’t have air conditioning. It was extremely annoying to have to sit in the house with the windows shut because this a-hole wanted to smoke. I yelled out the window several times to no avail. I thought of chucking some of those quit-smoking-packets over the wall. When the weather cooled down, the smoking stopped. Either the person moved or starting smoking inside.
Thankfully I don’t have any smokers close. I think that would be the worst!
It pretty much sucked.
OMG – I have my own list to add to your list!
Like the neighbour who lets his dog outside at 3am and leaves him to bark for an hour to get back in.
Or the neighbour who blows the snow from his driveway onto the road that is either already treacherous to navigate because it hasn’t been plowed yet … or has just been plowed. MORON!!!
… and then there’s the neighbour who not only has his Christmas lights up all year long, but actually uses them all year.
Whew! You’re right. It does feel good to unload 🙂
I love the year round Christmas lights people! Why not be festive? But the people that shovel or snow blow their snow into the road…Id like to get my own plow just so I could fill their driveway with all the snow from the whole neighborhood
I’ll be there with you as backup!
I’m cracking up. Too funny and true! The other day we drove by a house that had a PAYPHONE and a GAS PUMP right in their front yard. And this is in good ol’ suburbia. Weird!
OMG Phil, I have lol’d and lol’d!
First off, I should tell you that I am half of your list. This is probably not surprising to you, since we are nothing alike, but I feel compelled to tell you that I am white as a specter, frequently weed my garden in the dark, walk about barefoot, and my mailbox has no door. That being said, my neighbors all seem to like me, since I do bake a lot of cookies and give away plenty of produce.
I use no noisy tools and the mailbox is near the house, so I have that goin for me, eh?
Everyone in my neighborhood knows my youngest child’s name and I’m sure they delight in my screaming it and blowing my whistle most all evenings. A fair number of people have told her that her mother’s calling her.
Now, I don’t have any annoying neighbors. I think Weed Guy stopped selling the winter we moved here, my schizophrenic neighbor had moved to a group home and no longer walks about in ONLY a mostly-open robe and a hat, and everyone else seems to manage being the perfect blend of polite and avoidable.
Your dog needs an outhouse, a cuppa coffee and a cigarette, poor dear.
If you bake me cookies then you’d be the perfect neighbor no matter what else you do. Heck, if Charles Manson baked me cookies Id help him move his stuff in next door.
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Found you through Marissa’s blog, and I am so on board with your list! I live in an apartment that’s overrun by bad neighbors. There’s the girl who I call “Clomp Clomp” because she regularly gets home at 3 a.m. and refuses to take her heels off. Isn’t that the first thing a normal person would do? Then there’s Willie, who’d get drunk, take his shirt off, and literally howl at the moon while shouting racial slurs into the night! He was a peach, but luckily he moved out. I could go on, but you don’t know me! Thanks for the laugh. 😬
Hi Kim, it’s nice to meet you. We must have lived in the same apartment building at one time because Clomp Clomp lived upstairs from me too.
Hey Phil, nice to meet you too. I think Clomp Clomp is an apartment whore, so she’s probably lived in every apartment building in the world. Lucky us! I’ve tried leaving slippers outside of her door, but she’s just not taking the hint…
My Clomp Clomp was also hyperactive and didn’t own any furniture. At least I assume she had no furniture because she never sat down.
I lie in bed, and wish up at my Clomp Clomp, “Go to bed, go to bed, GO TO BED!” She must have furniture because eventually, she does go to bed. Or maybe she’s passed out on her bathroom floor. I don’t care as long as there’s silence.
It sounds like one neighbor causes the most problems. But really, Phil, I think Buddha or some other zen-like ass, not me, you understand, might ask why you chose to buy the home with the mailboxes in the front? It’s the catch-22 of the voyeur lifestyle; you have the best house for people watching, but you have to put up with the troglodyte who won’t shut his mailbox or give your dog any privacy. My neighbor had the temerity to fall and not be able to get up until my pizza delivery guy discovered him. What an asshole. He falls down so I have to eat cold pizza? I sense this isn’t your “people in 3d post”?
LOL! Sounds like you live in the same neighborhood that I used to