We live on a small road with houses facing each other across it. Parking can be a pain, but it’s normally fine as there are plenty of communal spaces very near.

On the day of our wedding, we ask our neighbour opposite us if they could not park in front of their house between 2:00 and 3:00 pm — they have a garage, two offroad spaces, and communal parking — because the wedding car will be coming and it’s a struggle to get to our house. The neighbour agrees and we think that’s another thing checked off the list.

Of course, on the day of the wedding, the wedding car spends thirty minutes trying to edge the way around not one, but two of that neighbour’s cars, blocking the road and causing the whole wedding to be late. 

We chalk it up to a pair of petty, jealous idiots that don’t want others to be happy. We don’t bother acknowledging them from that point on.

Fast forward a year or so. I’m clearing out the garage and am parked in front of the house. I load up the car with some donations when the same neighbour from before comes over, panicking.

Neighbour: “No, no, no. You can’t park there.”

Me: “What?”

Neighbour: “We have viewings. You need to move your car.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, I saw that you’re selling. Sure, I’ll move my car when I’m finished.”

Neighbour: “Good, good.”

I waited for her to go back inside and then I did the same. I made a cup of coffee and ignored the doorbell. I doubt parking in front of the house was the reason it didn’t sell — the house was massively overpriced — but it felt nice for some petty Karma.

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I’m outside the front of my house pruning some of the plants. It’s a bit of a job, although it is a tiny bit of land; reaching the back is impossible.

I’m sweeping up the clippings when a man I’ve never seen before approaches me.

Man: “You can do mine next, if you like?”

I laugh as I think he’s joking, but his expression tells me otherwise.

Me: “Oh, you’re serious. No, sorry, mate. I don’t do this for a living.”

Man: “You have all the tools and I don’t. Come on! Be neighbourly.”

Me: “I don’t know you, ‘neighbour,’ and these tools are cheap enough. Go buy your own.”

Man: “Don’t be a d**k! Come on, or let me borrow them.”

He reaches for the shears in my hand. I pull them away from him.

Me: “Get lost.”

Man: “Whatever, I’ll just come back and take them.”

Thankfully, I have a video doorbell that he was standing right in front of. I passed the video on to the police and they said they would investigate. I never heard from or saw the man again.

Sometimes, I think I’m the only person in my apartment complex who actually picks up after their dog. Every time I walk her, we have to navigate a gauntlet of poop so we don’t track it inside.

I always take my dog down to the corner of our street, a little way down from the door to our building, because there’s a receptacle there specifically for pet waste so it makes everything easier. I’m standing there waiting for my dog to do her thing when I see a man come out with his dog. He stays on the grass fairly close to the building door, telling the dog to go potty. I am absentmindedly watching and waiting for them to go inside, since my dog is very distractible and I know she won’t go until they leave. After a few minutes, the dog does her business, and predictably, I do not see the man pick up after her. 

But karma strikes! As they approach the building, I see the dog jump up the steps and the man pull her back, as he is vigorously wiping his shoe on the step while not-so-quietly grumbling to himself.

Man: “Wait, [Dog], I stepped in s***. F***. Can’t believe I stepped in f****** dog s***.”

After a minute or so of this, he went inside. Gee, random dude, I wonder why you stepped in s***. It’s almost like this is a preventable problem. But I guess we’ll never know.

I live on the second floor of an apartment building in a college town, so there are lots of young people getting their first taste of “the real world”.

My neighbor below me comes to my door one day.

Neighbor: “I need you to keep the noise down.”

I am confused, since I’m a rather quiet person, until she explains that the “noise” is from me walking around my apartment. She doesn’t appreciate how loudly I walk in my own home.

All the apartments have wall-to-wall carpets except for the first floor. I remember something my uncle once told me about how, if you don’t want to hear people walking above you, then you need to live on the top floor.

Me: “If me walking in my own apartment bothers you, you shouldn’t have chosen to live on the first floor.”

Neighbor: “I have trouble with stairs, so I didn’t have a choice. You just need to be quieter when you’re walking around.”

Me: *Politely* “I’ll work on that.”

And I shut the door. I am not going to alter how I walk in my own apartment just for her and her attitude problem.

Oddly enough, though, shortly after this encounter, I broke my foot walking down the stairs. I would be on crutches for six weeks with a cast and then have a walking cast for several weeks more after that. This made it difficult to move around my apartment since my crutches would get caught in the carpet.

I found that it was easier to sit in my desk chair and push myself around my small apartment with my still functioning foot and arms. However, again, the problem here was the d*** carpet. The wheels would get stuck in the carpet and would cause me the occasional problem. This meant I would have to hop around my apartment if I couldn’t get the chair unstuck from the floor. I could hear her complaining sometimes, especially when I had my balcony door open and she was outside. I honestly didn’t care about her petty problems, but I was tired of hearing them.

Then, one day, I was trying to push myself across the apartment to the kitchen and the wheels got stuck. I had just given the chair a big push, right as it got caught, and I promptly fell out of the chair and onto the floor. I didn’t land gracefully, and I ended up with a huge bruise on the back of my leg from landing on the armrest of the chair. Needless to say, I was not in a good mood and I was in pain.

My lovely neighbor came upstairs not too long after this and to complain that I woke her from her nap with “that loud bang,” I answered the door sitting in the evil chair with my broken foot in plain view. I politely told her that the “loud bang” she heard was my body hitting the floor. In my best sugary-sweet, sarcastic voice, I told her that I appreciated her concern for my well-being and that I was fine. I then thanked her for coming by to check on me and slammed the door in her face.

She never bothered me again.

I live in an apartment complex. There’s a row of four apartments with another four on the same lot, facing each other, owned by the same guy. It snowed a bit yesterday, so today when I got up I decided to help my landlord out since he is an older gentleman, and I grabbed my trusty snow shovel.

I started with our walkways leading up to the sidewalk and then started on the part that goes around back to the garages between the two quadplexes. Just my luck, our side drifted, and six inches of snow turned into a thigh-deep battle.

I’m maybe halfway done with my battle with the drift when someone from the other quadplex comes out and heads for the garages. Our two walkways are separated by about five feet of grass and her side is mostly clear. As this woman I’ve seen once and never spoken to passes me, she flaps her hand to get my attention.

Woman: “Excuuuuuse me!”

After about half a second of her flappy-birding me, I glance up.

Me: “Yes?”

She waves her hand in the general direction of her apartment.

Woman: “Put salt on my stair once you’re finished.”

My. Brain. Goes. Wild! So many things I could say. So many! So much opportunity for shenanigans! Malicious compliance? Petty revenge? But I’m not much for making people too mad if I can help it. I just try to be nice as a first option. I smile at her.

Me: *In a super cheerful voice* “Sorry, don’t have any!”

Woman: “Why not? That’s super dangerous! See all this snow? What if I slip? What company do you work for? What the name of it? I’m going to call up my landlord and have your companies contract cancelled!”

My smiled just gets bigger and bigger as she is talking.

Me: “Lady, I don’t work here; I live here.”

I pointed to my living room window. Her face went instantly red. I was going to mess with her a bit more, but she just muttered something under her breath and hurried off. It gave me the laugh I needed to finish out my morning.

But wait. There’s more!

She actually called the landlord! She claimed I swore at her and she complained that I didn’t shovel her stairs; she said nothing about salt, though. Apparently, she makes monthly complaints about all sorts of things. The takeaway of our conversation with the landlord was that this was a normal interaction with this woman and unless someone is dying, I should ignore her for my own sake.