I’m former military, and I’m a new leasing agent at a new senior apartment complex. One of our original residents passed away. 

Me: *To the manager* “Might we lower our flag to half-staff in respect for [Resident]?”

Manager: “Yes, let’s do that.”

Not long after, a retired military gentleman stopped by to ask about our flag.

Me: “We thought it fitting respect for a passed resident.”

He was impressed and brought a few friends over who ended up renting!

In the area of the city where I live, there are some row houses and a couple of big house blocks. Some of the row houses have their own private parking spots directly in front of their house entrances but obviously separated from the street/public area.

For all the rest of the people living in the big apartment complexes, there are some parking lanes as well as some turnouts. They’re all directly connected to the street and pedestrian walk, so they are public.

I have this particular neighbor who lives in the building next to mine, I think on the sixth floor. I know him from some owner’s meetings as these two buildings belong together and he owns an apartment in that building. He is somewhere in his fifties, and I don’t know what work he does, but he is at home most of the time. His car is a dark blue metallic Audi A6 which he rarely drives. Most of the time, his car is standing in the turnout parking spot directly connected to the pedestrian walk closest to the entrances of our buildings.

Last Saturday, an old friend of mine came by to help me move out our old living room furniture and bring up the new ones. Some of the old stuff was still in great shape, so my friend wanted to keep some of that. No problem, take what you want.

When he came, the parking spot closest to the entrance was free. Great, no need to carry the stuff far. We were happy. We took the stuff [Friend] wanted to keep to his car and went back inside and started to work on the new furniture.

After like four hours, we were done, and we wanted to quickly grab something to eat before [Friend] drove home; the installation had taken longer than we’d expected.

We went outside to find a “friendly” note behind the windscreen of [Friend]’s car and a blue metallic Audi A6 parked behind [Friend]’s car, about two inches away and half on the street as this was a turnout parking spot directly connected to the street.

Note: “TO THE IDIOT WHO BLOCKS MY SPOT: RING MY BELL AT HOUSE 25, SIXTH FLOOR. NEXT TIME, I WILL HAVE YOUR CAR TOWED! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE MY SPOT!”

Friend: “Is this guy serious? This is public parking.”

So, we went and rang the guy’s bell. It took some time for him to answer.

Friend: “You parked behind my car. Please move yours; I want to drive home.”

Neighbor: “About time! Wait; I will come!”

He came down already shaking his arms at us, and he immediately started yelling.

Neighbor: “YOU CAN’T PARK IN MY SPOT! NEVER PARK HERE AGAIN OR YOUR CAR IS GONE!”

Friend: “That is actually a public parking spot; anyone can park there.”

Neighbor: “No! This is my spot. I always use that spot. Everyone knows that is my spot!”

Friend: “That does not make it yours.”

Neighbor: “Yes, it does! I always use it, so by customary right, it belongs to me!“

Me: “Man, this is city property. Using it often does not make it yours.”

Neighbor: “This is my spot! Everyone knows that. Only I park here. Park here again and I will have your car towed.”

Friend: “Good luck with that. In a public parking spot, parked perfectly within the lines… while your car is actually parked half on the street and blocking traffic, so actually, your car is going to be towed.”

Ooooh, he did not like that. He made a move like he wanted to throw a punch but decided otherwise; due to his screaming, there were a couple of people watching the scene.

He got into his car and moved it to the side, making some rude gestures toward us.

After that, he started to place a box in the parking spot when he left.

Now, as the weather is getting better, I enjoy sitting on my balcony having a beer, reading my comics, and looking down on that exact street and parking area. The best part of my day now is watching [Neighbor], who screamed at me in public for ten minutes because he does not want others to park in a public spot, drive out, stop on the road without warning lights, and get out of his car to illegally block a public parking spot with a box.

I smile and wait and finish my beer. Then, I go down and remove his box and leave a note on the parking spot reading, “Welcome! Have a nice day. Please stay as long as you like.”

I can’t wait until my bell rings and he screams at me again.

This happened a few years ago when I was moving from Tennessee to Wisconsin. I put in my thirty-day notice with my apartment complex and set up a day when my apartment could be inspected for damage.

When the day came, I went to the office to let them know we were ready for inspection.

Receptionist: “I’m sorry, but no one is available but me, and I can’t leave the desk.”

Me: “We need to get on the road. Is there anything you can do?”

Receptionist: “Just go. We’ll contact you about the results of the inspection.”

I left the address of the place I was moving to, and we left.

The apartments I was moving from were undergoing restoration, and they hadn’t gotten to my apartment yet. All that was left in my apartment were some folded moving boxes that we didn’t need.

About a month after getting to Wisconsin, I got a registered letter — costing the sender over $3 — telling me that I owed $3 for some damage in the bathroom of my old apartment and that it was due the next day. The apartments were being renovated, which meant they were tearing out a lot of the bathroom and redoing it, so any damage should have been taken care of with that.

I didn’t call the apartment complex; I called the district manager, who used to be the complex manager. He told me not to worry about it, as he would take care of it.

Seriously!

My brother, sister, and I moved our mom into a low-income housing unit. Because my siblings live in other towns, it is up to me to look after Mom. The units are all ground level with individual entrances. In the center of the U-shaped complex is the manager’s office building. Each unit has a mailbox attached to the wall next to the entry door.

At one point, my mom was put into a hospital for several days to check and regulate her meds. She wound up staying for three weeks.

While she was gone, I intended to go every couple of days to check what little mail she might receive. The third day after she was admitted, I went for her mail and there wasn’t any. Not to worry. I waited a couple more days and, again, no mail. Then, I decided to go the next day and check because I suspected something was up since the daily newspaper was never there on the stoop.

I went to the manager’s office to see if he knew something about her mail and newspapers.

Manager: “The lady next door has been picking up her mail and paper. She said her rotten son was not paying any attention.”

Me: “You tell her to leave the mail alone and bring back all she has taken.”

A couple of days went by. I went to check again, and guess what? No mail and paper.

I decided to put a stop to this another way.

The next day, the manager stopped me at Mom’s door.

Manager: “What did you tell your mother’s neighbor? She’s scared to death.”

I saw that Mom’s mailbox was full of all the past mail. I grabbed it and handed the manager a postcard I’d sent my mom.

Me: “Here’s what I did.”

Postcard: “Anyone besides my mother who reads this postcard is in violation of Federal Postal Regulations and I will file a complaint with the Postmaster and have charges filed.”

Manager: “Nice. I’d have never thought of that.”

After that, the mail and newspaper were always there every day that I went to pick them up.

When I moved in with my girlfriend (who is now my wife), it took some time to get adjusted. Less than a year before, she had been forced out of her campus flat (since she wasn’t studying anymore) and had managed to get an apartment from a special social rental corporation for “working youngsters”. The rule was that you needed to be out of college, be under thirty-five years old, and either have a job or be disabled. Their apartments and maisonettes were located in a relatively decent neighbourhood which mostly consisted of family houses. Despite it being a very small apartment, it seemed quite okay.

So we thought.

First of all, you might know that bicycles are quite a thing here. All bicycles of our “stairs” (about twelve apartments with one or two people living in each of them) had to be cramped into one small shed. For some reason, people also put garbage in the shed that they couldn’t get rid of fast enough. There was even a spare door in that shed — God knows why. Of course, trying to get your bike in or out of it was not that easy. It easily resulted in bicycle dominoes or in actual damage. One of our more responsible neighbours put a new saddle on his bike, only to find it damaged within a few days.

The stairwell, right in front of our door, wasn’t treated much better. Someone (we never found out who) had the habit of putting bags full of garbage in there, suspiciously stuffing them away underneath the stairs. The housing corporation said they couldn’t do anything except send around letters not to do so. Apparently, hanging up a camera, like in the first flat I lived in, was too difficult? Of course, I got fed up and took action in the form of hanging up a note that the stairwells were no garbage dump. Nothing changed, and apparently, I was “passive-aggressive” for doing this.

Third and worst of all, the apartments were not really soundproof. The walls were thin, and everything was built around a small plaza, which was prone to cause echoes if people in the street were loud. Typical for the era in which these small apartment blocks had been built, bedrooms were all on the side of the walkway. So, if someone had friends over and they all went home in the middle of the night with quite a bit of alcohol (or other stuff) in their system, we were bound to be woken up from it. Heck, if anyone was just standing and talking on that walkway, we would already wake up from it.

The upstairs neighbours had a habit of putting on their radio really loudly. We had to complain several times before they finally got the message. During the day, this was bad enough, but a few times, they even did it during the night. They also owned a small dog that wasn’t properly trained and yapped ALL. THE. TIME. (Nowadays, we own a doggy from the same breed ourselves, and it barely barks or yaps, so it’s really a matter of training them.)

The neighbour on the left side. [Neighbour #1], clearly smoked weed every day. We could smell it on our balcony. Over time, he also developed the habit of putting on his radio… really loudly! It was always around 7:00 pm. He also got into verbal fights with the neighbour on his other side, [Neighbour #2], accusing him of setting his car on fire.

The reason for their falling out was that [Neighbour #2] had the habit of coming home from work really late at night, after which he — guess what — put on his radio really loudly!

One night, we woke up from the police knocking on [Neighbour #2]’s door after [Neighbour #1] had called the police about the music. Apparently, the guy was so intoxicated that he didn’t even notice the police ringing his doorbell and knocking on the door for about five minutes. In less than a week, the two neighbours shouted insults and accusations at each other. The same day, they made up on a whim and offered each other a beer as if fights like this were extremely normal. Meanwhile, we were not feeling so safe around these two anymore.

The worst offender, however, was our neighbour on the right side, [Neighbour #3]. Because she always — drum roll — put on her radio really loudly! After some talking to her — which wasn’t easy with our conflict-avoiding nature — she took it down a bit and even warned us when she was having a birthday celebration. But then, something changed. She started hosting parties at her apartment for no apparent reason. The music was extremely loud, and the guests were even louder. They also went onto the walkway, talking even louder. There were nights we barely got any sleep. We never found out what caused the change, but we suspected that it was just to spite us.

And all these stories about loud music only cover the people living directly next to us. The downstairs neighbours rarely caused any noise, so it wasn’t just the poor building or us being sensitive. My girlfriend told me that before I moved in, there was a summer night when she couldn’t sleep because some idiot in one of the other apartment buildings hosted a complete party with a DJ in his garden — which was on the side of the plaza, mind you.

It was all bad enough for me, who had to get up at 6:00 am every weekday to go to my job. My girlfriend, on the other hand, was chronically ill and really needed her rest to get even the simplest thing done.

One night, when we barely could sleep again, my girlfriend broke down and told me how much she hated living there. When she had moved in, she had already told me that she did so because she had no other choice, but now she even admitted that she had wanted to leave as soon as she had moved in. I suggested staying a week at my parent’s house while they were on holiday; we couldn’t afford a real holiday ourselves at the time and she really needed to get away for some time.

We were very happy to move away from that place, about sixteen months after I had moved in with her. We never looked back. And at least the description “working youngsters” made a lot more sense now, since many of these neighbours had proven to be completely immature.