Hi my name’s Stephanie, and I take things personally.
“Hi Stephanie”
Last week, Cale came home to the dogs going nuts in the backyard. Something that was chirping very loudly had lodged itself in between the concrete steps that lead into our house and the house. Small area, very loud little animal. After putting our understandably excited dogs in the house, we realized that it was a full grown squirrel that had lodged itself in there and really all it needed was some time to calm down and crawl out on its own. So that’s what we gave it. We laid some snacks around it to coax it out, came inside, and when we came out a little later it was gone. Problem solved. The end.
So why am I writing about this today? Why am I upset today? Because as I was tidying up the kitchen, I found a note from our neighbor.
Hi neighbor, my name is Stan ___. I don’t know if you’re aware but your little white dog barks constantly. Can you please keep it inside or ??. Thanks for your co-operation.
Confused, I asked Cale when we got this? “Oh that day the squirrel was out there. He’s an idiot don’t worry about it.” Easy for a guy to say. They can file things away in the “douche bag” category of their brain, and it is gone forever. Women (or just me) can’t just let it go. Rushing through my mind are all the weekends where the dogs are outside all day and don’t bark at all. And the weekend where Stan’s dog is the culprit of much more barking. Why are we the bad neighbors?
I understand that this day most likely could have been very frustrating considering how long that squirrel may have been stuck in there, but you must remember I take things personally. So now in my mind, my neighbors hate us. Which to be honest, I’ve thought this for quite some time. We are the only twenty-somethings probably in the entire town. I would guess that the average age of the people on our street is closer to sixty. So in their eyes, we are those crazy irresponsible kids. Which we haven’t sought out to change because well we don’t care that much. None of it is true, we are a quiet pair of newlyweds who drive slowly trying to save gas, and keep a clean house and garden. Really should be the ideal set of neighbors. They can continue to think of us however they’d like because I work in San Jose at a public accounting firm; I don’t have time to try to change their stereotype of us.
Apparently, Stan doesn’t want to take the time to either. Why would he think that rudely writing a note instead of following any sort of etiquette was supposed to leave us with the desire to be cordial to him? I don’t even want to imagine what the ?? as a solution means to him? Would he be satisfied with a replying note letting him know that we put her down as our part of the co-operation? (p.s. cooperation does not need a hyphen Stan.)
I would gladly comply with this rude note had there actually been a problem. But having been home during the day while I’ve left the dogs outside all day long and never hearing them bark at all, I know that this was an isolated incident and is not nuisance barking. Sure they are dogs, and they will bark if a squirrel runs through our yard, but this is most definitely not an issue. We live in the country! This neighbors house is as far as three houses down would be on a normal suburban street.
The point. I don’t know. I ripped the note up, and it was still haunting me, so I thought getting my feelings out would be the best solution.
It is times like these where I wish I were not the only person who cares about etiquette. The polite thing would be to kindly address the person directly. Not in a note. When you write an angry note, you are dumping your issues onto the receiver and walking away. The receiver is left with no way to reply unless they do what you should have done in the first place, which was to talk to you. Or like me, they are left stewing about it trying to convince themselves that the writer was just venting their frustrations and to just let it go.
How do you all deal with neighbors? Are you best buds? Do you even talk? In my searching to find if I should even respond or to just write this neighbor off as a crotchety old man, I found this and found it may be helpful if any of you are having neighbor issues.
Sigh. Time to try and salvage my ruined day. By the way, I’m totally tempted at the moment to live up to our neighbors’ expectations and go toilet papering or something. But I won’t.
Tags: Life, Those Puppers
That sucks. I know this morning I got frustrated that some was revving their engine for like 20 minutes when at 6:30am, but I just vented to my family, and I was better. I totally understand how it is when you get a note or something like that and you’re taking it personally. I get all bothered by it too. But, don’t let it ruin your weekend! Go have a good time and make sure when you walk your dogs by Stan’s house the leave a little present. LOL. JUST KIDDING!
Do something to get rid of your stress… like some pushups! *grin*
See you Monday Steph.
PS. How does your calendar look for Sushi on Monday or Tuesday?
Living in apartments and then in a condo we definitely had our share of rude neighbors. I only left one note, but it was a friendly note. We had little gardens at our condos and at one point the old man that lived across from us as well as our garden got overtaken by aphids. So wanting to be organic I released tons of ladybugs into both our gardens. Our neighbor wasn’t home at the time. I didn’t want him to use yucky pesticides that would kill the ladybugs so I left a note telling him what I’d done and to please avoid the pesticides at least for a week to see if the my solution worked. He wasn’t mad about it at all and we talked about it a few days later. He was happy that we, unlike some of our other neighbors, took pride in our garden just like he did.
Currently in our neighborhood there are a lot of barking dogs, but I would never leave a note on someone’s door about it. There is a message board for our neighborhood and people complain about stupid petty stuff like that all the time. They even threaten to call animal control without even trying to talk to their neighbors. People are really picky about exterior home decorations, parking, and lawn maintenence too. It’s really frustrating. I wish they would just see that everyone has a different taste in gardening and not be so uptight if someone has to park in their driveway instead of the garage or whatever. And if they do have a problem to go directly to that neighbor instead of talking about them on the message board or getting the HOA to send out a complaint letter. Ugh!
Sorry that was long winded…
Oh Steph, I would have taken it the exact same way, so don’t feel bad! We live in a condo and love our one set of neighbors. They’re 20-somethings like us and we hang out with them quite frequently. Unfortunately, our neighbor above us has been an issue. We think he’s divorced, because every now and then, he has 3 kids with him who aren’t there any other time. He has all hardwood floors and the young kids run back and forth and it literally sounds like a herd of elephants running across our ceiling at 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday. We’ve gone up in person to cordially mention the ’stampede’, but the running still happens. Eh, we’ve gone up there 3 times now, but knock on wood, we haven’t heard it in awhile!
What a dick!
Ugh. I hate notes like that! I lived in an apartment for a year with the queen of notes. She would write a note to all the roommates while we were home and then she would leave for the day. Why couldn’t she just come talk to us instead of leaving a cowardly note then hiding from us?
Too bad you ripped it up. I would have been a great submission for http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/.
Oh, and we just moved so we are on pins and needles trying to be great neighbors. We are the youngest couple on the block so we worry about people getting stereotypical ideas. Our nice next door neighbors have a dog that eggs our dog on. We feel awful when the barking war starts, but they have said it is completely their dog’s fault. We still put a kibosh on the barking, just in case they are trying to be nice and our dog is really the culprit. (Though I know is really isn’t! He doesn’t bark at any other dog, just the one little pug.)
Megan,
How funny!! I’ve never seen that site before. Oh that made my day, I definitely feel less bad about the note we got after reading some of the ones on there!
Isn’t it so hard to try to keep your dog from barking if another dog starts it? Said neighbor’s dog does it, but he obviously isn’t as nice as your neighbors.
Hi Katie,
I actually had the same problem in my last apartment in college. It was a family of four, all very overweight, and the two girls shared the room above mine. I just accepted the noise because there wasn’t much even they could do about it. Except one night around 11pm, and I had a final the next day I was desperately trying to study for, I finally went up there and explained that I was trying to study, and it sounded like the girls were jumping off their bed and onto the floor. The dad was super nice about it and said he had told them to go to sleep. It stopped, so that was good. After that though I swore I would never live where someone was above me.
Steph,
When we moved into our apartment in Pacifica, we happened to get the apartment next door to the apartment manager. On 4th of July, we went out for a bbq and came home to find a note about how our dog barked non-stop and that if we didn’t get him under control we would have to move out or get rid of our dog to stay in the apartment. I was distraught and upset that they felt this was acceptable instead of talking to us directly about our dog. I was ready to move out, when our neighbors on the other side of us (who I absolutely love) were approached by the manager and he said that he had never heard our dog bark, it turned out that it was an entirely different dog doing all the barking. We never got an apology and I ended up hearing this all from one of the receptionists in the leasing office. It was such bullshit and I can’t believe how some “neighbors” act.
We now live in a home in Reno and have some really nice neighbors, they all wave at each other when we are walking around with our dogs or driving down the street. We know both of our neighbors but we still have issues with them, the ones to the right never take care of their yard and the ones to the left let their young kids (2 and 4) run free around the neighborhood. But they also do nice stuff like take our paper in while we are on vacation, so it is good to have neighbors that we know but we realize that they aren’t our best friends and maybe its better that way so it doesn’t get awkward when the fence blows down and you have to be neighbors and get it taken care of instead of friends that might get feelings involved. I wish more people would be neighborly.
Okay that was the longest comment I HAVE ever left on anyones blog. Good luck with the neighbor situation and believe me I am exactly the same, I can’t just brush it off like my husband does and that always upsets me more.
Sara
Urgh that guys sounds like a total you-know-what. People need to be a little more tolerant. I know it’s easier said than done, but try not to think about it (that’s what I say, but I am such a loudmouth I’d probably march over and give him a piece of my mind.) I am rather lucky where I am…my sister owns the house on one side of me and the house on the other side is empty, in foreclosure. My (not so great) neighborhood is full of families of non-English-speaking people with HUGE amounts of family living in one house and sixteen cars always parked illegally so really, no matter what evil our dogs committed, no one really has any room to be snide around here. That’s too bad that that guy with his irritating passive-aggressive notes is passing his bad energy onto you.
And btw “I take things personally” too. My in-laws are here this weekend and as of this morning my father in law had made about twenty-one snide semi-joking comments about my daughter being spoiled (she’s six months old). Finally this morning I got a lil lippy back about it. I don’t think he’s any too pleased about my telling him to stop saying that but I’m sorry…it bothers me! And it’s my house…and my daughter…so deal!
Sorry for the long fiesty comment!
I avoid my neighbors. We move every few years so there really is not point in getting to know them. But we used to have a great neighbor we’d get together with weekly, ahh how I miss them.
Stan is a dork!
girl, I know how you feel! I take things personally a lot, and I agree with you- the guy should have just knocked on the door. Think of it this way. Maybe he just got some bad news or something and it happened to be on the day your dogs barked at the squirel. He was probably just acting on impulse.
Anyway, I hope you feel better! Tell Mr Stan to shove it or ??
Lol
well, it looks like everyone has neighbor experiences to share!! This is the great thing about blogging through your frustration– you end up knowing everyone else feels just the same way.
I’m sorry your day got ruined by the note– I know I would have worried about it too. This might seem like a weird suggestion, but maybe you could try “heaping coals on his head” and take him some baked goods sometime… that would make him feel badly for being so picky, and you would feel great for knowing you took the high road and were a GREAT neighbor. hehe
We don’t really know our neighbors yet too much, but they seem quite nice. I think it’s a pretty laid-back neighborhood, with lots of young families, which is a good place for us to be. I guess we’ll see as time goes on!
Now I must go enter your contest before it’s too late!
Hey Steph,
I’m so sorry your neighbor is being a butthead — I would have reacted the same way because I am def one to take things personally and over analyze and such. I also think it was rude and lazy to write the note rather than just come and speak with you personally. And also, I’m sure the neighbor is overreacting — your dogs are so adorable, I really doubt they could have been causing too much trouble. Oh, and like you pointed out, maybe they were barking because of the squirrel — but come on, if the dogs were barking a lot one day, the neighbor really should have waited to see if the dogs continue barking day after day. You can just write a crazy complaining note after one day! Um, yeah, I hate apartment neighbors! I hate their loud rock music and parties… I keep saying I want to move into a old folks community — but then maybe, like in your situation, WE will be the crazy loud kids that people complain about. Hmm…. This comment has already gotten way too long, but yeah, in the past my downstairs neighbor made my life a living hell. And let’s just say it didn’t bring out the best in me … a night in particular, I was throwing insults down at the neighbor — real classy, huh?! omg. So crazy! That guy was nutz.
Hey Talia,
You know I honestly thought maybe I should just kill him with kindness, but I think if I brought baked goods over I may actually kill him.
haha! Nah a few good nights sleep and keen observation has given me peace in that I know my dogs do not bark all day long, and he was just impatient and frustrated that one day. I’ve actually never met him (his house is actually not very close to ours since ours is up a gravel drive), so I wouldn’t even know him should I see him.
Sarah Marie P,
It’s funny how bad situations tend to bring out the worst in us. I know when people are rude to me I tend to be rude back and hate them forever! lol! So I wouldn’t feel bad about your downstairs neighbor, it’s hard to maintain our composure when things are rough.