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I have the loudest, most obnoxious a-hole neighbors... what to do?

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tedtropy

$50/hour, but no kissing on the lips and colors must be pre-separated
Naked Snake said:
Use earplugs. They work for me. Although don't use too much or your ears might get infected or something (happened to me), but my ears recovered quickly and I still use them when I need to.

I don't have very noisy neighbors, and thankfully I only share a wall with them in the kitchen. But I do have a house construction right outside my bedroom, and I wake up late every day and sleep in the morning on weekends, when it's too noisy outside I'll just put earplugs and cover my ear with blanket and fall asleep.

I've had to do that for stretches, then I got to a point where I loved headphones to deal with it, got addicted to headfi forums...and I'm sure some know what a money pit that can turn into, although it was an interesting hobby for awhile. I know there's legions of Internet tough guys out there that think you can just stroll up to your neighbor's door and threaten them into being quiet, but unfortunately such problems in the real world are rarely so easily resolved.

I once had a noisy neighbor upstairs that turned out to be a girl that worked for the leasing office and let her damn cousins basically run into the walls. Yeah, THAT was fun to get taken care of. Got to where I'd call the front office everyday to complain at the same time, let my remarkably noisy brother crash with me for abit and we eventually came to a noise level compromise.
 
TxdoHawk said:
Definitely talk to your apartment manager. If he/she refuses to do anything, figure out your local noise ordinances and contact the police. Be friendly and reasonable with both.

Bothering the neighbors yourself in these situations is always a poor gamble...generally if they are this bad, they're not going to care what anyone without authority says, and if you resort to the manager or police afterward they know exactly who made the call. Is it "cowardly"? Yes, but you also don't want someone who lives a door down from you pissed at you. There's plenty they can do to make your life miserable.

I don't agree with this at all. Confronting the neighbor in person, being friendly at first, and then letting them now what the problem is will make your life easier 95% of the time. If they are frequently noisy people, they might even THANK you for not calling the cops first (that's happened to me before). Most people will do what they can to keep it down if they know they are bothering you and they know that you are ready to call the police if they keep it up. You are doing them a HUGE favor by asking in person first and they will appreciate it, more often than not.

On the other hand if you call the cops and it's just some random noise disturbance, they won't care. They'll do it again. This has always been my experience. And it's also my experience that the police and the property management will ask you if you've made any effort to resolve the problem yourself...if you have to say no (and you do, since the neighbor will confirm nobody asked him to keep it down), they won't take you as seriously.
 
I would normally say to resolve it in a diplomatic way with the guy, but how jackass do you have to be to bang when someone's vacuuming at 8 pm when you yourself get into yelling matches in the middle of night. Nuke him.
 
My neighbors are the nicest couple ever. I play nothing but shitty jpop music out loud and they never complain, or even look at me the wrong way. They regularly give me some nice, delicious apple pie too.

I fucking love those guys.
 

Kaeru

Banned
Mason said:
So my apartment shares a wall with these people who are driving me insane. Since I moved in a few months ago, it's constantly been an annoyance (maybe a once a week occurrence), but it has gotten worse in the past couple of weeks.

The guy who lives there is clearly having issues with his girlfriend or something. I'll wake up in the morning to him screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP BITCH, SHUT THE FUCK UP BITCH, SHUT THE FUCK UP BITCH, LEAVE THEN BITCH, FUCKIN LEAVE BITCH" etc etc etc, ad nauseum. When it happens in the mornings, it's definitely annoying and obnoxious, but at least I'm already awake, right?

Well, the past two nights, I have gotten almost zero sleep because the douchebag has started doing this in the middle of the night. I think last night he was doing this over the phone because I wasn't hearing any response, I was just getting his end of the conversation, but I think she has been over there and it has happened in person before (which makes me wonder if there is any kind of violence going on).

Also last night, apparently somebody got in a fight with somebody, because I hear my neighbors from across the hall coming out there and talking to some guy who is moaning in pain. I can only make out part of the conversation taking place, but apparently this guy has his head cut open or is injured pretty badly, as my neighbor kept asking if he wanted to go to the hospital and if he was ok. How did I hear all this occurring outside, you ask? Oh, because I had moved into the living room to sleep on the couch in a fruitless attempt to get away from the douchebag yelling into his phone that I could hear clearly from my bedroom.

Here's the kicker. I was vacuuming a couple days ago at a decent hour (8pm-ish), and this guy starts banging on my wall as if to tell me to keep it down. I'm not 100% sure that's what the banging was, but it's never happened otherwise, and he was only banging when the vacuum was on.

So my question is, what should I do? Surely someone else has been in a similar situation.

Clearly these people (or this guy, I have no idea who actually lives there) are sketchy, so I'm hesitant to call the cops as it will probably be pretty obvious who did it. Furthermore, do I even have a valid complaint since it's noise coming from inside their apartment and I'm just able to hear it? Although, like I said, it has spilled outside a few times recently.

It's just driving me insane that I'm getting such little sleep. A couple more nights of this and I'm probably going to lose it. It's frustrating as hell to lay there listening to him yell and/or talk loudly ALL NIGHT.

I think you should post on message boards and vent your problems with people.
That will really improve your situation.

What you should NOT do is walk up to him, talk to him and say "Hey I'm your neighbor and I have had problems sleeping because of your loud discussions with your girlfriend. Do you think you could try to keep it down in the nights?"
 

Wired

Member
Pop On Arrival said:
My neighbors are the nicest couple ever. I play nothing but shitty jpop music out loud and they never complain, or even look at me the wrong way. They regularly give me some nice, delicious apple pie too.

I fucking love those guys.


I'm sure it's extra delicious
 
Flagrant said:
Can't you like create a 10/100Hz or something sound wave, put the speaker against the wall and make them sick?

No, I know this teacher who was involved in that research. It was some US weaponry research where some scientists created a gigantic horn. Which to everyones knowledge is the world's largest horn. The horn was designed to do a subsonic 1/2 hz frequency designed to induce nausea and disorientation.

You need a giant horn driver about the size of a football field and 2 giant conductors the size of power plants to create a 1/2 hz current to push and pull the driver at the throat.
 

therapist

Member
Dont be such a god damn vagina.

If hes going to knock on the wall for you vacuuming at 8 freakin PM , then knock on the walls EXCEEDINGLY loud whenever hes in a shouting match , if that doesnt work , go talk to him. If hes an ass and refuses to quiet down , which he seems he would be, then talk to the manager.

If that doesnt work , threaten him , show him you mean business with a swift punch to the throat.

I wouldnt take that shit , me losing sleep is one of the only things that gets me pissed.
 

Blackface

Banned
1. Call the police and speak to your land lord. Police are lazy as fuck. They would much rather tell some guy to shut his mouth, then deal with a pissed off PCP addict or crack head with a gun.

2.Grow a pair of balls and Knock on his door and tell him you can hear all the bullshit he is saying and he needs to shut his fucking mouth. Chances are, he may not know everyone can hear him, and will be pretty fucking embarrassed. If he acts like a prick, revert to step one, or move on to step three.

3. When he is being loud at night, get up and bang on the wall. Continue banging on the wall until something happens. Something will happen, because we all know banging on walls is the most annoying shit ever. If he shuts up, problem solved. If he shuts up for 30 minutes then does it again, bang on the wall some more. You may need to keeps this up, and train him like you would train a dog. If he comes over, explain to him why you banged on the wall, and tell him you will do it every single time he starts yelling like a lunatic. Then laugh in his face and slam your door. If he end up hitting you, call the police and have him arrested. If he threatens you, call the police and have him arrested. If he continues to hit or threaten you, have a restraining order put on him. If when he gets home from being in jail, he continues to yell in the middle of the night, then continue banging on the walls.

Something will get done if you bang on then wall. You are not wrong in any situation. He won't continue to yell and act like a prick, if he can't hear himself, or can't hear the person he is yelling at because you are banging on the wall loud enough.

4. There are various other things you can do to him that are illegal. However if you don't have the balls to do steps 1-3, you won't have the balls to do anything illegal.
 

Drek

Member
industrian said:
I need to know if this is true, and how to recreate it. It'll help me out a lot if I have the luck of moving in next to neds who play Scooter from 11am to 1am every day.
Its true, you can find instructions in minutes online. Biggest thing I helped him scrounge was an old 25" TV to (primarily for the capacitor if I recall).

I didn't help with the assembly or use because to my knowledge making one without even discharging it is a pretty serious felony.

If I recall the biggest problem he had with it was making a directional blast, he said he could've had just an area wide "fuck everything in the building up" EMP together for just a few hundred bucks and a weekend of his time.

Got to be good at soldering and electrical wiring, and be crazy ass careful with the capacitor, because if you cause it to discharge while you're assembling you'll probably die.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
byproduct said:
If you live in an apartment and you haven't discovered earplugs yet, you're doing it wrong.
How does that help when you're trying to get to sleep and you have work the next day?
Personally, I like for my alarm clocks to actually wake me up. I've thought about using my iPod and in-ear phones as an alarm, but there are several ways for that to go wrong.
Personally, I find that the noise from something like a running PC or a fan on low helps to block noise from other units.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Trevor360 said:
internal clock. Evolve already monkey
Even if it were reliable, I don't always work in the same place every day, and therefore don't always need to wake up at the same time.
 

dreadfulwater

aka morbidesque
Agent Ghost said:
Record some of the disturbances, then call the police.


Nah fuck that, just knock on his door and tell him to shut the fuck up.


exactly this.

If you go after him in this way, even if he is the feral beast of a person he sounds like he is, he should at least respect the confrontation, and maybe tone down the bullshit.
 

Hootie

Member
Trax416 said:
1. Call the police and speak to your land lord. Police are lazy as fuck. They would much rather tell some guy to shut his mouth, then deal with a pissed off PCP addict or crack head with a gun.

2.Grow a pair of balls and Knock on his door and tell him you can hear all the bullshit he is saying and he needs to shut his fucking mouth. Chances are, he may not know everyone can hear him, and will be pretty fucking embarrassed. If he acts like a prick, revert to step one, or move on to step three.

3. When he is being loud at night, get up and bang on the wall. Continue banging on the wall until something happens. Something will happen, because we all know banging on walls is the most annoying shit ever. If he shuts up, problem solved. If he shuts up for 30 minutes then does it again, bang on the wall some more. You may need to keeps this up, and train him like you would train a dog. If he comes over, explain to him why you banged on the wall, and tell him you will do it every single time he starts yelling like a lunatic. Then laugh in his face and slam your door. If he end up hitting you, call the police and have him arrested. If he threatens you, call the police and have him arrested. If he continues to hit or threaten you, have a restraining order put on him. If when he gets home from being in jail, he continues to yell in the middle of the night, then continue banging on the walls.

Something will get done if you bang on then wall. You are not wrong in any situation. He won't continue to yell and act like a prick, if he can't hear himself, or can't hear the person he is yelling at because you are banging on the wall loud enough.

4. There are various other things you can do to him that are illegal. However if you don't have the balls to do steps 1-3, you won't have the balls to do anything illegal.

:bow

Holy shit dude :lol
 
The only thing that worked for my obnoxiously loud neighbors upstairs was a set of speakers pressed facing into the ceiling and Cibo Matto "Birthday Cake" on repeat way too loud with the bass cranked every time they dropped something heavy or crashed onto the floor. At first I'd play the song once fully for every thud. Then one afternoon, I just left it on then left my apartment for several hours. The next day one of the people upstairs said "we can't live like this" and I explained that it was only going to get louder and more frequent if they kept it up and that it was really up to her what happened. After that, their crashing/ dropping / thudding stopped entirely.
 

Amon37

Member
echoshifting said:
I don't agree with this at all. Confronting the neighbor in person, being friendly at first, and then letting them now what the problem is will make your life easier 95% of the time.

Except this guy is a total doucebag and is of your other 5%. That sign on his door says it all. It will not be a friendly confrontation.
 
Kick him in the balls so hard that his voice will get incredibly squeaky and it won't bother you.

Or you could call the police everytime the screaming starts. There.
 
before even reading the OP, I knew that you wouldn't have actually talked to him about the problem

"HOW CAN I AVOID CONFRONTATION"

and if he is a docuhe, talk to the apartment manager, I mean really now
 
Amon37 said:
Except this guy is a total doucebag and is of your other 5%. That sign on his door says it all. It will not be a friendly confrontation.

Ridiculous assumption. The guy will never know unless he grows a pair and heads over there and virtually anyone would rather deal with a pissed off neighbor than the cops.

If it's after 5:30 then yeah he shouldn't knock on the guy's door, but at the very least a note pointing out that he can hear the guy and he's going to call the cops the next time should do the trick. If it were me, though, I'd head over the next day and if nobody answered I'd leave that note.
 
The people above me go in and out of the balcony every few minutes at nights and it makes a loud screaching noise. This was during the weekdays too. You know, during a WORK WEEK. Not only that, but when I'm sleeping at nights, I hear a bubbling noise. The guy above me is arabic, so I'm thinking he's smoking whatever arabs like to smoke. The bubbling noise drove me NUTS. The noise wouldn't stop. It kept going and going and I was going to lose my mind. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I called the office. They sent a note to his door and ever since then he stopped........

Now onto the woman next to me. She was playing loud music up until 1 in the morning on Monday night. Walls were shaking. Called up the office to make a complaint............

Thursday morning. I hear people talking really loud and laughing. Check my watch. It's FIVE F***ING IN THE MORNING. Luckily I fell back to sleep.

Seriously, WTF? Do they assholes have any goddamn common sense? It's a weekday. People wake up early to go to work. Nobody wants to hear this shit. No goddamn respect what so ever. Sometimes I just want to move out in the middle of nowhere where I'll be at peace.
 

lil smoke

Banned
Jason's Ultimatum said:
Seriously, WTF? Do they assholes have any goddamn common sense? It's a weekday. People wake up early to go to work. Nobody wants to hear this shit. No goddamn respect what so ever. Sometimes I just want to move out in the middle of nowhere where I'll be at peace.
I think in most cases, people just arent aware of the noise they make. Like it sounds like the people above me hold some type of fitness class for fat folks.

But I doubt they're aware I can hear them, whatever their doing up there.
 

tak

Member
Smear poo all over the door.

I'm not sure how it'll solve your problem, but I'm sure it'll solve something.
 
Pop On Arrival said:
My neighbors are the nicest couple ever. I play nothing but shitty jpop music out loud and they never complain, or even look at me the wrong way. They regularly give me some nice, delicious apple pie too.

I fucking love those guys.

edwin_knowles_snow_white_the_seven_.jpg
 

TimeLike

Member
Mercury Fred said:
The only thing that worked for my obnoxiously loud neighbors upstairs was a set of speakers pressed facing into the ceiling and Cibo Matto "Birthday Cake" on repeat way too loud with the bass cranked every time they dropped something heavy or crashed onto the floor. At first I'd play the song once fully for every thud. Then one afternoon, I just left it on then left my apartment for several hours. The next day one of the people upstairs said "we can't live like this" and I explained that it was only going to get louder and more frequent if they kept it up and that it was really up to her what happened. After that, their crashing/ dropping / thudding stopped entirely.


Holy christ almighty I youtubed that cibo matto thing and my god that is the most depraved thing I've ever heard. Wow. No wonder it worked for you.
 
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