Respecting your neighbors can sometimes mean putting your own routines on hold.

So when their downstairs neighbors experienced a family tragedy, one couple upstairs couldn’t agree on whether to continue with their cleaning or stay silent out of respect.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

AITA for stopping my girlfriend from vacuuming when our downstairs neighbor’s mom just died?

We live in a house that’s divided into two floors. My landlord and his girlfriend live on the first floor, and my girlfriend and I live on the second.

Today, my landlord messaged me to say that his girlfriend’s mother had passed away, and that if we heard loud crying, we should try to be understanding.

He was more than willing to be as respectful as he could.

I told him it was no problem, offered my condolences, and plan to bring them flowers tomorrow to show my respects.

Here’s the problem: her family is there, all gathered together.

But not everyone in his household agreed, and it started quite the argument.

My girlfriend, who bought a new vacuum today, thinks it’s a good idea to vacuum our apartment (which she does daily). I told her that out of respect, she shouldn’t do it.

I offered to do it tomorrow after work, but I didn’t think it was right to do it today. We argued a lot because she said it didn’t matter, that it would only take 10 minutes.

We kept arguing to the point where I took the vacuum into the bathroom.

We don’t have good sound insulation between the floors, so it would be quite loud.

AITA?

Who could have thought such good intentions could lead to such tension.

What did Reddit have to say?

He’s not wrong for wanting to show respect to someone who’s obviously grieving.

While the vacuuming may not be as big of a deal as he thinks, he’s still not in the wrong for having good intentions.

It was probably best to just let it be.

The downstairs neighbors have much bigger issues at hand than a vacuum.

He tried to be respectful of a moment of grief downstairs, but upstairs, it sparked a different type of tension entirely.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.