Kate Hackett
We’ve all had them: the people who come home and refuse to take their clompy shoes off as they walk all over the apartment JUST ABOVE YOUR HEAD; the people who play loud music at 11pm; the smokers…
So scrolling through Redditor u/Robwaudby‘s question was a series of eye rolls and “yeahhhhh”s for me. The user asked,
“What’s the worst thing you have ever done to an annoying neighbour?”
And gave us a way to live our worst inclinations. Here are some of the best answers.
1. Blue!
“My dad was talking to our neighbor about what color he should paint the house, and as a joke he said, ‘Well, I might as well paint the old one (house) blue!’ The neighbor became almost angry and started going off about how that was stupid and he couldn’t do that. Well, that’s the story of how I grew up in a blue house.” — u/Stokbakko
2. Genius
“When I was 10 or so, an old lady was nasty to my brother and I for sitting on ‘her’ curb. So we got the bright idea to have an estate sale for her. We got up at like 4 a.m. on Saturday morning and put up homemade cardboard garage sale signs with her address on them and ‘early birds welcome’ in bold letters. We then sat on the curb a little down the street across from her house and watched people bang on the door for an hour or so. The best part is we didn’t put a date on the signs, so if she didn’t find all the signs, presumably people would keep showing up every Saturday.” — u/AlaskanBiologist
3. Bouillon cubes
“My wife and I had a neighbor who hated us because their family friends who went through a divorce lived there before us, and we bought the house. They were mean to my wife, parked across our driveway when she was about to go to work, threw pieces of wood over our fence, and let their dog crap on our lawn without picking it up. I tried talking to them a couple times and was promptly told to f-off. The husband used to brag about his lawn to everyone, so the next time it rained, I threw an entire box of bouillon cubes into their backyard and let the rain melt them into the grass. Their dog absolutely destroyed their yard looking for the smell, and I would make sure to comment on it every chance I got.” — u/Caffinejunkie9
4. Don’t mess with the brother
“Years ago, when you could advertise house sales in the paper without too many pictures, my brother put in an ad for his obnoxious neighbor’s house. It was just an exterior picture and was priced about 75K under market as a private sale with the neighbor’s phone number. He found out the guy was inundated with calls for weeks but never found out who had listed it.” — u/hank-_-the-_-tank
5. Tired of the fence offense
“My mom’s neighbor called the city to demand my mom repair the fence that divided their yards. This lady had been a crab apple for 10+ years, but this move pissed my mom off. The fence did need mild repairs, but my mom was already in the process of getting quotes to fix it and would have done it if the neighbor had just talked to her. When the city contacted my mom and said she had to maintain the fence, she asked if she legally had to have one. Turns out there are rules about maintaining a fence, but not requiring you have one, so my mom paid a contractor to tear it down entirely. The neighbor asked my mom when the new fence would be built, and she said, ‘You want a fence? Build it yourself!’ A couple weeks later, my mom had a nice new fence, courtesy of one annoying neighbor.” — u/robothouserock
6. Lawn of mash
“I poured a bunch of instant mashed potato powder boxes on their lawn, so when it rained, they had a lawn full of mashed potatoes.” — u/MurderDoneRight
7. Trick or — oh. Trick
“My great-grandfather was one of the last people in town to get indoor plumbing, so he had an outhouse in his yard. Every Halloween, the neighborhood kids came into the yard and knocked over the building to expose the cesspit. He got tired of it, so one year on the night before Halloween, he moved the building forward and covered the fess with burlap, disguising it in leaves and grass clippings. In the dark, it was almost impossible to tell it was there. On Halloween night, he sat in the outhouse and waited. It wasn’t long after sundown when he heard the wet splat outside as a couple of kids fell into the muck. He lowered a ladder into the cesspit for them to leave after making them promise to never mess with his outhouse again. The kids honored their promise and even spread the word around the neighborhood not to mess with that outhouse any more.” — u/Lentra888
8. Enough
“We lived in a neighborhood of townhouses. One neighbor let their dogs shit all over everyone’s lawn and never picked it up. We tried asking them, we tried picking it up and putting it on their doorstep, but they still refused to do it. My one neighbor decided to get a piece of it and smear it all over the front of the house. After that, they started picking it up.” — u/CrabPplCrabPpl
9. Too many parties
“The rich brats next door always threw loud, drunken parties when their parents were out of town. One Sunday morning, I went out to find the corner of our lot (which was a school bus stop) littered with used condoms. That night around midnight, I gloved-up and collected a bunch of them, snuck into the neighbors’ yard, and scattered them around the pool, the garage, and the back door where mom was sure to see them. There were no more parties.” — u/TGMcGonigle
10. Beat them at their own game
“I had a terrible work schedule and had to wake up at 2:30 to be at work by 4. My downstairs neighbors would blare loud music at all hours of the night, and I could feel the bass through my mattress. I went downstairs and politely asked them to turn it down, and they seemed to kindly agree. As soon as I got back in bed, they turned it up even louder and kept it going until about 1:30. Before I left for work at 3:30, I turned over my amplifier so the speaker was facing the floor, turned the volume up, and set my guitar on top of it. I left for my 12-hour shift, and the feedback was still screaming when I came home. The neighbors never blared their music again.” — u/4bangeranger
11. Backyard engineering
“My grandpa’s neighbor’s septic tank started leaking into my grandpa’s backyard. He repeatedly asked his neighbor to fix the tank and clean up the mess, and the neighbor completely brushed him off. So my grandpa took matters into his own hands. He rigged up a ‘plumbing system’ in his yard — an upright PVC pipe that pointed at the neighbor’s backyard. It was set up to spray the neighbor’s own septic waste over the fence and into their beautiful and polished yard. Just like that, the neighbor fixed his septic tank.” — u/lonedandelion
12. So much damn noise
“I had a noisy neighbor in the apartment above me. The music was SO loud in the hallway that I couldn’t tell which unit it was coming from at first. I knocked on his door and politely asked him to turn it down, but he refused, and I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with him. After a few more days of this, I decided to take action. The laundry room on my floor had all of the electrical panels for individual units clearly labelled. Every time he blasted his music, I would go to the laundry room and turn his power off. I started off with a few seconds (to give the illusion that he blew something), but when he STILL wouldn’t put his music lower, I would just shut his power off for hours. I could hear him swearing, but I didn’t care. My lease was almost up, and as soon as it was, I was out of there.” — u/TropicalPrairie
13. Constant fighting
“Our neighbors were constantly fighting, would get drunk every weekend, and blasted loud music until 4 a.m. Well, the girlfriend went out of town for a week for a work training, and we saw another girl park outside the house while she was gone. We heard the new girl and the BF going at it very loudly too. So the next time they were being super loud at 2 a.m., we went over to ask them to turn down the music. They both yelled at us to mind our own business. My wife just casually asked, ‘Oh, did you get back together? What about that nice blonde girl who was over all last week? Is this a thrupple situation now?’ Then we went home and enjoyed listening to them throwing everyone out and having their last fight.” — u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In
14. Supersoaker poop
“There was a really quiet, meek guy on our street, and a neighbor would constantly let their dog poo on his front lawn. He tried all the normal things like pepper on the lawn, motion sprinklers, and little signs, but the dog owner didn’t care. Well, one day the guy got so mad, he mashed up and liquified his OWN POO and put it into a super soaker. He followed the man home, then returned in the middle of the night and emptied the super soaker through the man’s letterbox. The impact splatter hit the walls, hallway, stairs, ceiling and even reached into the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Apparently the stench was HORRENDOUS.” — u/ArcherOk6223
15. The Long Game
“My grandmother had a neighbor who refused to help her repair the fence between their properties. It was still functional, but falling apart. Any conversation about fixing the fence ended with him saying that it was on her property so it was her fence and therefore she was fully responsible.
My grandmother took a fall and was hospitalized for a few weeks, only to return home and find a new fence built an extra 5 feet into her property and a bill in the mail from the neighbor. He argued with her for months that she owed him, that the original fence was on his property, and that where it was now was the boundary line.
My grandmother got a surveyor and, surprise! The original fence was correct, and the neighbor had taken 5 feet off her yard. At this point she was very old, frail, and tired of fighting her asshole neighbor. Instead, she let nature take over. She planted blackberries along the back fence, and within two years it was covered. Every year, she’d walk the fence and throw seeds over because, of course, it was still her yard. After five years of fighting, the blackberries had reclaimed her property. She’s been gone for a few years now, but the blackberries remain, her way of haunting her neighbor. He’s tried ripping up the ones on his side of the fence on numerous occasions, but the plants reseed themselves and grow back every year from her side.” — u/almost_a_person
