I’m not sure which is worse, a bad neighbor or a fussy HOA.

Probably the combination of the two, like in this story.

Because this woman lived above an elderly couple, and she tried to be respectful and keep her 4 kids quiet(ish).

Things didn’t go well.

Let’s take a look.

You want to report me to the HOA? Be my guest.

We were living in a condo complex on the second floor, and my downstairs neighbor was this older couple.

The lady had a heart condition so she was always in and out of the hospital, and I did my best to be respectful of her needs.

I have 4 kids, and unfortunately when you choose to live in the ground level unit you have to deal with upstairs noise.

I am pretty strict about how my kids play inside, so if there was ever excessive noise it didn’t last long.

Every now and then lady would text me asking if everything was ok, and it was always just a tantrum.

She was nice enough to tell them she was going to clean the porch, but they were angry she was going to wash away some chalk drawings.

Back in august my husband’s maternal grandmother died, and we were not informed, much less invited to the funeral. It’s a whole thing.

So to help his siblings through their grief we offered to host a lunch for his siblings after they went to the graveside and did a little meeting there.

I wanted to clean my porch off because hello, 4 kids are super messy.

I texted my neighbor and very politely but firmly said hey, we’re gonna be cleaning our porch so if there’s anything you don’t want getting wet move it out of the way.

WELL. She didn’t like that at all, threw a HUGE fit, and had her husband come up and try to bully us.

Her grandkids had drawn in chalk on her patio and we were just gonna wash it all away! How horrible of us!

Her husband ends up saying, “we’ll just report it to the HOA and deal with it that way.” I was so irritated.

After they complained to the HOA, she got a letter.

We ended up not cleaning the porch due to some other circumstances, but they had already sent in their complaint.

Next week rolls by and I get a letter in the mail from the HOA basically saying, “you have to keep your porch clean or we will fine you.”

In comes malicious compliance.

She had to comply, regardless of how inconvenient it was for her neighbors!

I text my neighbor and let her know that we got the letter, and I would be cleaning the porch that day so she needed to get all her stuff moved.

She was all huffy, “oh no! You can’t do that today! I can’t move anything! I’ll talk to my husband.”

A while later she texts and says “he’s coming home early to move everything. He’s NOT happy.”

Gee, I wish we could have done this on A SATURDAY like I had planned last week! Sucks to suck, lady!

It felt so glorious spraying off my porch knowing she was downstairs complaining about it because I could hear her phone conversation.

I wonder if Reddit found this as satisfying as she did…

The top comment says that’s a classic HOA move.

At least this way they won’t get another complaint.

This commenter thought she was nicer than she could have been.

Some people just love to be miserable.

The logic has flown the coop.

Neighbors need to give people more grace. Dang.

Keeping 4 kids quiet(ish) upstairs is no easy feat.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.