Sunday, January 22, 2012

The Neighbor Debacle.

Goodness. The events of the last few hours have been insane in these parts. I come home and all the action happens!

Matt and I live in a good-sized apartment complex. All of the buildings are two story and connected together. There are various doors that open into "buildings" of two, four, or six apartments. Our little chunk of the complex is near the end. If you go into the door to enter our building, there are two apartments on the main floor and two apartments upstairs. We live in one of the upper apartments. The only shared walls we have with our neighbors is a small sliver of the kitchen with our fellow upstairs neighbors, and the wall in our second bedroom and bathroom with the townhome attached on the other side. It is a fairly quiet building. The couple across the hall live with her father (I would say they are in their late 30s). The person below them is another older man and he lives alone. Our old neighbors who lived below us were another couple (again, mid to late 30s) and they were gone a lot. I think they both went on business trips. But they were young, friendly, and would have people over every once in awhile.

It was a peaceful place, this apartment. Well, until this afternoon.

Only an hour after I got back this afternoon, a GINORMOUS moving truck pulled up as a new family began moving in downstairs. Matt left for work right as they showed up, so I've been dealing with the chaos by myself.

I understand that moving in is a noisy affair. All the lugging and contorting of furniture is a pain. And I can imagine that it is a lot worse when you have kids.

But seriously, COME ON.

There were two kids RUNNING up and down the stairs non-stop for a period of time. When they reached the top of the stairs, they would bang on the wall (oh, which is our apartment, since our door is literally at the top of the staircase). Then I could hear their little feet pounding back down. Then there were the hands slapping on the wall as they came up the stairs, which is the wall of our living room.

I dealt with it.

But then I am trying to read in the living room, and I keep hearing kicking and screaming from out on our landing. I peeked out our little peephole to see a very little kid sitting right in front of my door with a couple of toys. I know he didn't belong to the people across the hole, so I popped the door open to say hello.

He was playing quietly, so I said hi and shook his hand. Seriously, the kid looked to be 3 or 4 at most. I asked him his name, but he shook his head at me and kept playing. I went downstairs to see if they were, you know, LOOKING for him, but the door to the apartment below ours (where they were moving in) was closed shut. I knocked and when they answered, I told them their little boy was upstairs by himself, at the top of a very tall and scary staircase, and on a narrow balcony. She just nodded at me and shut the door.

I went back upstairs, told the kid to be careful, and went back into my apartment.

Maybe ten minutes later, the little peaceful child turned into a little hellion. He was screaming and yelling bloody murder, kicking our front door, and throwing his toys all over the landing, staircase, and downstairs into the entryway. I took it for a few minutes before opening my door and asking him to calm down. He just screamed at me, so I asked him to go back downstairs to his mom and dad. Nothing but screams.

So back down I went and knocked on the door. They opened it again and I complained about their kid kicking my door, SCREAMING, and such. All they did was nod and wave their hand at me before shutting the door. I walked back to the staircase, looking up at the little hellion screaming, then went back and pounded on their door again. It was the guy this time, and while he looked tired, he was not the one dealing with a screaming child. So I told him, you either come remove your child or I will call the cops

He just stared at me, so I said that if he could not control his child in HIS OWN APARTMENT, I would call the police and have them take care of it. He came with me and I gestured upstairs (as if he needed pointing because the kid was still SCREAMING and kicking). He picked his kid up and took him into their apartment. Finally.

THEN, just minutes later, what do I hear but little feet running up and down the stairs again, their little fists pounding against my wall and slapping our front door?

I went back down after telling the two kids to be quiet and told both parents that I was lodging a complaint with the complex. Again, they were in their apartment with their door shut, leaving the kids completely unattended in an apartment building. Simply ridiculous.

Anyway, I just called the main office and left a heated message for the manager of the complex. I am a very nice person and it takes A LOT to get me riled up and mad. We had a lot of issues at our old complex and have been very happy here. I am not going to put up with this kind of crap.

I'll let you know how the saga goes when I hear back from the complex tomorrow. For now, our new neighbors are quiet downstairs and there is no more screaming in the entryway.

Jeesh.


22 comments:

  1. I cannot stand it when parents don't parent. A month ago a 7 year old girl was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in a "nice" apartment complex in a "nice"Georgia town. The little girl was just playing across the street on a playground, but there was no adult supervision. Seriously, folks need to watch their kids!

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  2. I cannot stand it when parents don't parent. A month ago a 7 year old girl was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in a "nice" apartment complex in a "nice"Georgia town. The little girl was just playing across the street on a playground, but there was no adult supervision. Seriously, folks need to watch their kids!

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  3. Uh-oh. Noisy neighbors are the worst! I hope they settle down!

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  4. Oops...I thought I was commenting on the prior post.

    So yikes on the update! Lack of parental supervision at that age can be grounds for a report to child welfare. Other factors come in to play, like safety of the child, but it's something to keep in mind...

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    1. Oh my gosh. Awful. I've been dealing with a bratty pre-teen who plays her saxophone on the front porch EVERY Friday afternoon until, like, 8 p.m. Ridiculous. Then at night she runs around the house (I live on piers and sound carries). But I feel like I can't say anything because I own my house, and we're friendly. But oh my gosh, it drives me crazy.

      Good luck!

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  5. And the situation has gotten worse. Ugh. You are nicer than me. I would have thrown the kid's toys down the stairs and launched at him with a belt to scare him away from my apartment, smacking it on the patio floor if necessary. I certainly wouldn't be a nice neighbor, haha!

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  6. Bloody hell! That's awful! I hope that gets sorted fast, what a nightmare :(

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  7. That is horrifying. I feel so bad for that child and any further problems would prompt me to call child services. There is no excuse for not watching your kid.

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  8. I feel for you. Where we live now is lovely and quiet (my husband and I lower the average age significantly, so it's not surprising) but I used to live in a basement flat underneath a huge, multiple generation Indian family all crammed into one room. It can't have been much fun for them either, but I really didn't enjoy trying to do my masters while living underneath all that noise. Hope you manage to sort your neighbours out soon.

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  9. Oh. My. Goodness. I would be livid. I'm so sorry that your new neighbors are (what seem to be) inconsiderate jerks. Hopefully things will settle down. :/

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  10. Honestly, I'm down with letting *older* kids run around outside without supervision. I did, and that wasn't too long ago (back in the 80s/early 90s when the crime rate was much higher). But I was also WELL BEHAVED and about 10 YEARS OLD. A screaming 4 YEAR OLD? Hell to the no. If my parents ever heard that I spent my outside time bothering the neighbors, I wouldn't have been let outside for a month. And who lets a 4 year old go anywhere unsupervised? Insanity.

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  11. I remember apartment living, and it can be annoying at times, but that's just ridiculous. They should definitely be more concerned about their own child.

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  12. Wow! Aside from the whole issue of disrespect, leaving a kid unattended on a landing at the top of a staircase? REALLY!? People are just freakin' nuts. I hope it gets better or gets taken care of.

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  13. Wow. That doesn't sound like a good situation. Certainly not for the children, if their parents are that inattentive. I hope it all works out, and it was just moving-weekend exhaustion.

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  14. Ugh, sounds awful, I hope it is sorted soon.

    We live in a semi-detached house and new neighbours moved in on the side of our shared wall on Christmas eve. They don't appear to have a job and are up all hours of the night with the TV on obscenely loud. We also hear them having sex and arguing :(

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  15. That's terrible! I would be so fruustrated. Sorry you had to put up with that as a homecoming, Allie. I hope your apartment office resolves it. :(

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  16. Ugh. Good luck. I hate living in a complex - mine isn't so bad, but I have really, really smelly neighbors (one set make awful-smelling ethnic food of some sort, and the others are insanely heavy smokers) and our one neighbor can be pretty loud on occasion... but, yeah. I cannot wait to own a stand-alone home. Preferably with a lot of property on all four sides.

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  17. In high school my parents had a couple over and I watched their kids so they could visit. The kids were probably 2 and 4, the 2 year old continually screamed and was also sick. When I brought this to the Mother's attention, she blew it off and let her daughter sit in a dirty diaper for hours. I was so upset by the Mom's lack of parenting I wanted to scream!

    I can not imagine how frustrating your situation must be, I think you are completely in the right and the parents should be ashamed by their lack of parenting. I hope this is all resolved quickly.

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  18. Wow. *blinkblink* Makes me grateful that my neighbors have always been pretty decent. I hope this works out okay quickly.

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  19. That is absolutely horrible. I would call the cops and DHS so fast so you are far more patient than I am. I hope that things improve. If they don't, I hope that your other neighbors who are used to peace and quiet also back you up.

    Hopefully the complex manager is helpful as well.

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  20. That's just crazy! I really feel for you because we've had our share of loud and obnoxious neighbors during the nearly 11 years we've been in our rental townhouse. Things have quieted down recently, but there was a time when I was calling the leasing office and writing letters all the time to get our neighbors to stop blasting music, screaming, and banging on the walls at 1 am!

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  21. wow, good luck. Hopefully, it was just a super stressful move day for them and they are not normally like that. fingers crossed.

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