Karens Are Bad Enough When They Leave At The End Of A Transaction

We have all seen stories here about multi-level apartments where the upstairs neighbors are the worst because they make so much noise. This is going to be a story about when the downstairs neighbor was the bad guy.

I lived with my best friend and her husband in a two-story apartment that took up the second and third floor — the third floor was a loft — of a three-story apartment building. We were on the corner of the building. One interior wall was shared with the building’s stairwell to get from the first to the second floor. The other interior wall was shared with the building’s laundry room.

This essentially meant the only people we had to worry about bothering were in the ground floor apartment below us. My bedroom was up in the loft so it would be rare for me to bother ground floor people unless I was on the second floor. There were two bedrooms on the second floor — one in front where my best friend and her husband slept and one in the back that was used as an office.

Every time we took note of someone moving into that apartment, the three of us would go down and introduce ourselves to explain that the husband had a heavy step and got loud playing video games but would try to keep quiet after 10:00 pm, and that between the three of us we had four cats ranging from six pounds to twenty pounds — all approved by the leasing office — that could get hyper and start playing at any hour of the night.

During our year and a half there, we only had to do introductions three times. The first ground floor neighbor was fine, and there were no problems for anyone. The second ground floor neighbor did get loud enough one time butchering something that I could hear it in my bedroom, but we let it slide. The third ground-floor tenant… was a Karen.

Sometime before they moved in, my best friend had broken her ankle and by the time the Karen moved in, my friend had graduated to a medical walking boot and we both had gotten new jobs working a night shift and would be home after 1:00 am. This new information was provided along with our normal introductions and the Karen seemed fine with this.

Not too long after, the leasing office sent us a notice that a noise complaint had been filed against us. My friend limped to the office with her boot strapped in place to find out what was going on. The office took one look at her and tossed the complaint since they had already disregarded part of it due to our cats. Though the leasing office couldn’t tell us who filed the complaint, they did show my friend a detailed list that had been provided to them with times and days of the noises. It was easy to tell that it was the Karen because they started the day after we introduced ourselves and explained what to expect.

A few weeks later, three of the heaviest cats and I were the only ones awake at 4:00 am. I was watching TV with headphones on and heard a banging on our apartment door. I went to check it out and realized it was a police officer! Apparently, his station got a noise complaint about our apartment and was sent to investigate. I showed and explained my friend’s medical boot, and the three heaviest cats were busy playing, so he immediately apologized for the inconvenience and headed on his merry way. 

I should note here that there was a clause in the rental agreement that all noise complaints had to go through the leasing office and not the cops. I was betting that the Karen had been complaining to the office since the first complaint and was getting brushed off because we provided proof of why we were unintentionally loud.

The next day, my friend and I went and knocked on the Karen’s door. She and a friend we hadn’t met before answered. According to the Karen, her friend had heard loud thumping in the back bedroom for five minutes at 1:30 am. We explained that the back bedroom was an office so no one sleeps there or was likely to be using the room at 1:30 am.

The Karen blew us off, saying that something had to have been making noise, and we repeated the fact that three of our four cats were fat and were probably playing. We also found out through careful questioning that the friend was planning to live in the apartment for several months without going on the lease, which was also a requirement if a tenant decided to get a roommate.

We reported the Karen for violating the rental agreement for both calling the cops for a noise complaint as well as for having a roommate not on the agreement. Later, when the Karen’s motorscooter fell on someone’s car and dented it pretty badly and they moved the scooter to another place to avoid getting in trouble, we reported that, too, since the damages looked to be about $1,000 to repair.

We moved out before the Karen and her friend did, so I do not know what became of them, but good riddance. The place we are in now has concrete in the walls to muffle the sounds coming from all sides, so it’s blissful silence unless I have windows open.