One of the apartments in this complex is occupied by students. They are louder than most of the other residents, but most nights it’s no big deal – especially now that school is in session. I was occasionally on the loud side back in the day as well. One of the kids has a girlfriend, however, that is gradually driving me insane. It’s just that, well, she’s bitchy.
The guy’s parking place is right below the window I’m sitting next to right now. Every time she comes or goes there is conversation. Almost always she’s in a bad mood and she’s taking it out on the guy. Or whoever’s on the other end of her mobile phone. Or the other voices in her head. Good lord that woman has a lot of complaining to do, and directly below this window seems to be her favorite place to do it. The hour of the day or night makes no difference; in fact, the later it is at night, the more she’s accumulated to bitch about. 3 a.m.? A fine time to rail on and on with her unseen friends.
Why, oh, why can’t the guy just give her the heave-ho? Is her company at other times so charming that he can ignore the constant stream of complaints I get to hear? Is there some field around this window that puts her in a bad mood? I just want to put my hand on the guy’s shoulder and say, “Dude, if you can put up with that shit, you’re going to make some other girl a fine boyfriend.”
Some quiet, polite girl.
Doesn’t she have a blog to complain to? Sheesh.
In doing research involving dealing with the Old Soldier, Pat and I have discovered that such behavior is extremely typical of the early stages of dementia. However, if this person is indeed a college student, that’s a less likely cause.
I’m trying to think of some creative way of dealing with the situation … such as, you’ve just cleaned the kitchen or bathroom, but there’s so much crud in the mop bucket that it’s likely to clog the bathtub drain, so you have to toss it out the window … “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were down there …”
If the origin of the noise were indoors, there would be the option of switching off the circuit breaker to the offending apartment, but that isn’t going to help if the offending behavior mostly occurs in the parking lot.
Lodging a complaint with the landlord works, sometimes, depending on how much the landlord cares about you, whether other tenants have also been complaining, whether the landlord wants to risk losing several tenants by not evicting one troublemaker, whether the tenants who have been bothered by the troublemaker have the power to move elsewhere, and whether the landlord fears being sued for wrongful eviction for evicting the troublemaker.
Oh, I should also mention that really effective landlords will get an offending tenant to quiet down with a warning notice and not have to go to the trouble of an eviction. Who knows, maybe a warning notice will be the trigger that gets this guy to dump the girl.
(Man, I’d hate to be a landlord — the good ones are WAY underpaid for the job they do!)
The manager does a good job letting the kids know when they are getting too rambunctious. The complaining girl does not even live here.
Even if the girl doesn’t live there, tenants ARE responsible for the behavior of their guests. A misbehaving guest CAN lead to an eviction if the tenant can’t keep that guest’s behavior under control. A good landlord will find a diplomatic way of explaining that concept.
I’m kinda glad my landlord is in the room next door. And that there’s some overlap in musical tastes.
Maybe you can write a “woman scorned” note on his car window in lipstick or something, so that his gf will see it and break up with him.
A pair of womens panties stuffed in the door of his car might work as well.
This is war soldier! You don’t win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other poor bastard die for his.
/Nixon would never had been caught if he had a sneaky squirrel working on his team.
SJ — Those tactics might work, or they might backfire. What if they just make the gf even more angry without making her break up with him? And what if he’s such a wimp that he puts up with her increased level of anger? You’ve just increased the level of pain that the innocent sap is subject to, and probably also the decibel level that Jer has to cope with.