When you live in an apartment building, you have to expect that you will sometimes hear the neighbors making noise, but some neighbors are just entirely too loud to endure.

What would you do if your neighbor kept listening to their TV at a very high volume and refused to stop?

That is what happened to the group in this story, so they finally turned up their music all the way until the neighbor asked them to turn it down, and they only agreed if he turned down his TV.

Can you turn down the volume?

Back in the 90’s when I was in the Navy, two guys in my department and I had an apartment off the ship when we were in our home port.

All pretty normal, so far.

One of them met a girl prior to deployment and wanted to move in with her after we got back, so we asked around if anyone else wanted or needed a place off base.

That’s where “Steve” enters the picture (not his real name; no real names here).

This would be awful.

Steve’s wife cheated on him while we were deployed. He needed a place to immediately move all his stuff, we had an immediate opening, so Steve moving in worked for everyone.

A little more background. My other roommate, John, moved in his fiancé, Jane, when we got back from deployment, so even when we did quick in and outs, she was in the apartment.

This is one of the big downsides to living in an apartment.

Turns out one of the neighbors we shared a common wall with tended to listen to his TV or music at full volume ALL THE TIME.

At first she politely asked him to turn it down (to no avail), then she complained to the apartment management (same result).

So, everyone has heard it.

We only hear about this one night when we are all in the apartment and we hear the neighbor’s TV at full tilt through the common wall.

Jane starts going off saying this has been a recurring issue and the neighbor has basically ignored all attempts to resolve it. Steve said he’d take care of it.

He’s laid back, until he isn’t.

Now here’s the thing, Steve was a really laid back, polite Southern dude who looked like Elvis Presley, if Elvis was a 6’4″ power-lifter. He shoved the sofa away from the wall and turned both of his massive 90’s era speakers to face that common wall and cranked the volume of Dwight Yoakam’s cover of “Suspicious Minds” to 11.

Then he threw open our curtains so the neighbor could see into our apartment if he approached our door and took a chair and set it facing the front door so he could be seen sitting there waiting for someone to come to the door.

Oh, they are upset about the loud music, are they?

Sure enough, the neighbor heads over almost immediately in a huff, but the speed of his approach visibly changed when he saw Steve through the window.

Knock on door, so yoked Elvis answers while Dwight’s cover continues on repeat.

Maybe now the neighbor will watch TV at a reasonable volume.

The neighbor asks if we could turn down the volume, so Steve says, “Really, we just kept turning up the volume until we could hear it over what was coming from your apartment”, all while it is clear from the door that everything was moved away from the wall to make way for the speakers.

Neighbor pauses sheepishly for a bit and then says, “sorry, we’ll turn our volume down.”.

I don’t think they will have this problem again.

Steve then flips a switch and steps a bit closer and say, “You be sure to do that”, and then just glares down on this poor dude.

Sure enough we never had another issue with that neighbor again whether we were in port or not.

Sometimes you just have to make people experience what they are doing for themselves before they are willing to change.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

Now, this is too funny.

Yikes, that is awful.

Everyone knows this line.

At least they finally learned their lesson.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.