My stupid neighbor

Downstairs, in apartment #1, lives a woman and her daughter. The mother is a loud and obnoxious person. She’ll sometimes turn up her stereo and open all her windows and doors so everybody that lives in the complex is subjected to her music. She’ll try to start a conversation with you as you’re trying to get into your car. She’s just one of those people I find increasingly annoying.

Once she found out that I worked on computers, she’d ask for help with her computer, presumably for free. Hell, I even did help her once.

The biggest issue I have with her is that we share a 2-car garage. Unfortunately there is no dividing partition, which she seems to have interpreted as meaning she can store her personal belongings on my half. Our lease agreements state that the garages are not to be used as storage facilities (we’re supposed to have enough room to park a vehicle inside).

She’s done this before and after finding a bunch of boxes that had tipped over and collapsed on my drum set, I pushed her stuff back over to her side and insisted that she get her side organized and off my side. 6-8 months later, after I had talked to her about it a few more times (and her promising it would be done “in two weeks” a few times) I arrived home from work and found a couple of guys rummaging through my things. She had hired these guys to restack all her stuff and because they could hardly speak more than 5 words of English they interpreted her instructions as meaning to reorganize the entire garage – including my stuff! After 30 minutes of pointing out my things and having them put back into place, she had the nerve to act as if she had done some great thing.

About 6 months later her boxes and storage bins started making their way back to my side. I told her to move them and she said something to the effect of, “Oh get over it, it’s only a couple of boxes.” Time went on and out of laziness and not wanting to hassle with it, I didn’t do anything about it. This mentality all changed when I went in the garage to try and fix Rece’s bike, after getting home one dark winter’s evening, so he could ride it to school the next morning.

More of her boxes were stacked on my side and I could barely get his bike moved out and into any position to work on. I was furious, but being late and she wasn’t home, I didn’t voice my objections. It took another 6 weeks before I found myself looking at my open garage and seeing just how much room was still left on my side of the garage and decided to speak with her once more.

I knocked on her door on a Thursday evening and told her that she had until the end of the weekend to move her stuff out of my half of our shared garage. She objected, saying that she had to work over the weekend, but I didn’t relent and said that if she didn’t move it, I would and she probably wouldn’t like where I moved it. She threatened to call the cops if I touched her things and slammed the door on me as I turned to walk away. I then snapped some pictures of the garage.

Before - 2008-03-13 Before - 2008-03-13-16 Before - 2008-03-13

That Sunday, as I got back from a hike, I noticed that she was home. It was 2:30 p.m. – so much for having to work. I didn’t bother to check if she had moved her stuff, but I was positive that she hadn’t.

The next day, Monday, after I got home from work, I opened the garage to check on the status and found everything to still be in the same place. Rece and I had dinner and then went out to the garage to move it ourselves. Fortunately, she was gone, so we carefully moved every box and storage container that was over the imaginary line into her carport spot, as far forward as possible and not stacked too high.

As I was moving the last item, she pulled up and started yelling at me from her car to stop touching her things. She stopped short in her car port and yelled at me some more, then inexplicably pulled back a few feet, stopped, yelled at me again, pulled forward and bumped into her stuff. She then started to yell at me about possibly damaging her car.

A couple of the other neighbors had come out to see what was going on. I kept calm and simply stated that she had been warned. She then started ranting about how she couldn’t move the stuff because she had back problems, to which I replied, “It’s amazing how your back was well enough to move all that stuff into my side of the garage, then” and walked away. She threw a few insults my way, but I just went upstairs and got my camera and took some shots of the garage and her pile of boxes in her carport.

After - 2008-03-17-18 After - 2008-03-17 After - 2008-03-17

As I was walking back into my apartment I heard her begging one of the other tenants if they could help her and let her store her things in their garage. What a piece of work she is.

I uploaded the set of pictures to my Flickr account.

This entry can’t stand people that have no respect for other people’s property and space.